Through Their Eyes
by RebelFaerie
Summary: Reality is a subjective thing. Sure, there's only one set of events. But there are six billion different pairs of eyes. Six billion different perspectives. Six billion different realities. So many versions of what happened that August of 1950. Finished!
1. Baby John: Home Free Home

**Disclaimer-** So I don't own West Side Story. I don't own anything else that I might have offhandedly referenced in this thing either. The legal jurisdiction to everything in this story is under their respective owners. You know who you are. And if you don't, well, you don't deserve the legal jurisdiction of anything, so I'm not worried.

**Summary-** We've all heard what happened in the summer of 1950 in New York's upper west side. The story's not new. But it was new to them, while it was happening. You never knew what was coming around the next corner. How would they tell the story? And what if everything didn't turn out exactly as you thought it did? Funny you should ask…

* * *

**One:**

**Baby John-**

**Home Free Home**

"I'm looking at you through the glass

Don't know how much time has passed

All I know is that it feels like forever

But no one ever tells you that forever feels like home

Sitting all alone inside your head"

-Stone Sour_, Through Glass_-

I'd been standing outside the door of Doc's Drugstore for what must've been at least ten minutes now, staring through the window, trying to talk myself into going in. _What'm I so scared of?,_ I asked myself. _What's the worst that could happen? Isn't this what I've been wanting to do for months now? _I knew the answer was sure, this was what I wanted. Then again, it's always easier imagined than done. But I'm not passing up a chance like this. I'll never get one again.

I took a deep breath and walked in the door, and there they were. All ten of them, crowded around that one back table like they'd been every day I walked past the store. I was scared shitless, but I didn't care much. Well, I mean... You know what I mean, right? I wasn't going to let my scaredness get in the way of doing what I had to do, is what I mean. Anyway, I went over to them, pulled up a chair, and sat down. The depressing part of that was that it took them all of about thirty seconds to notice I was there. Self-esteem has never been a real strength of mine, but that was enough to kill what little of it I had. Finally, one of them turned and gave me a weird "what-are-you-doing-here?" look. He was a tall, skinny kid, maybe two years older than me. Not good-looking in the normal movie-star kind of way, but there was something about him that made you want to look again. There was a feeling of purpose, importance, _coolness_ that went with this kid, and it fascinated me. _He_ fascinated me.

"Hey, boys, look what we've got here!" he said, sweeping his blond hair out of his eyes. "A stowaway. Who're you with, kid? The Emeralds? The Hawks? Who?" He talked with a strong, drawling west-side accent. Maybe that went without saying - I mean, we were in the West Side, so go figure -, but it just made him sound tough, hard. Anyone else with an accent like that just sounded like my Aunt Edna, I'd always thought, but again, this one was different.

I just kind of stared at him. Who was I with? Nobody. And even if I was, did he honestly think I was gonna tell him?

"C'mon, kid, don't play stupid. Who sent ya?" he asked again, and he was losing patience. Apparently, it didn't take much.

"Cool your jets, Riff. He ain't with no one," the guy next to him muttered. This guy, on the other hand, was your average movie-star action hero: tall, dark, and handsome. I mean, if I was thinking about him that way. Which I wasn't. He immediately went back to his conversation with another Jet. "I'm telling ya, A-Rab, zip guns? The Hawks ain't got that kind of money. Don't kid yourself."

The kid who must be called Riff sighed. "Well, then why the hell you here?" he asked me.

I kept staring for just long enough for them to get the impression that I was completely out of my mind (unintentional, but hey! It seemed to happen a lot), then I finally answered. "I'm J-John. I wanted t-to join the Jets," I said, praying to whatever god felt like listening at the time that I wouldn't throw up.

All the talk at the table died. Now it was everyone else's turn to stare at me.

"Him? You're kidding me. What is he, twelve?" one of them, a short guy who didn't look much older than twelve himself, sneered.

The boy who'd told Riff to cool it glared at him. "Shut up, Action," he snapped.

"Don't you tell me to shut up! You ain't got no authority here no more, Deadbeat Tony, the so-called Jet that hardly even shows up anymore! You think you can still tell me what to do, think again!" Action, the short kid, yelled back.

Tony shot him a look that could've stopped the heart of a lesser man, but it was Riff who stood up and towered over him like he was plotting murder. Which, come to think of it, I wouldn't've put past him. "Think again yourself, Action! You forgettin' who make them Wolves turn tail and run back to Queens? You forgettin' who saved your neck from the Hawks a week ago? You forgettin' who started the goddamn Jets with me in the first place? Tony, every time. You think you can do better? Do ya?" Action didn't say anything. "No? Then leave the decisions to people who can handle 'em."

Action shrank down in his chair like he wanted to disappear, and muttered a quiet "Sorry, dadeo," under his breath.

"Damn right," Riff snapped, sitting back down and turning back to me. There was a look in his eyes now that sent a shiver down my back. It wasn't anger, exactly, and I wouldn't call it fear or sadness either, more like some crazy combination of the three, and it made him look so powerful that it scared me. "So. John, you said?" he asked me.

"Yeah," I answered. Something cooler might've fit, but I was still concentrating so hard on not pissing my pants that "yeah" was about all I could manage.

"How old are you, John, seriously?" one of them asked me.

"Fifteen," I admitted. "But I'm old for my age, and…"

"Hey, no worries, man. I was thirteen when I joined up. Good days, those were. And I was taller then than Action is now, too…" he added, grinning.

Action sent him the Death Glare. He practically had to look straight up to do it, too. Seriously, the Jet whose name I didn't know was huge. Six-seven if anything. I felt like I'd been transported to Munchkinland, and I was taller than Action, too… "It's the freaking genetics, man. I'm taller than half my family already, so don't start that – "

Riff groaned and shook his head in exasperation. "Action, we still don't care."

Action told Riff to go do something that I'm not really sure is anatomically possible, but dropped the subject.

"John," Tony said, returning to the real subject of the moment- me. "Why'd you want to be in the Jets anyway?"

I paused, looking for an answer. I had nothing. Why did I, anyway? I knew, sure, but it wasn't one of those things you could put into words. I didn't think they'd buy that as an answer, though. "Because… well…" I began halfheartedly, gradually gaining steam as I went along, "When you're on your own, like me, you know, it's not easy. You got no one to look out for you, to watch your back, no one that cares about you except your family, and that doesn't even count. When you're in a gang, though, you walk in twos, threes, fours, and people respect that. You're home free home, nobody messes with you. You guys least of all. The Jets are the biggest gang," – I looked from the giant Jet to Action, laughed to myself, and decided to try and reword that – "I mean, the greatest gang on these streets, and everybody knows it. That's what I want, to be like you guys," I finished finally. Not bad for improv, huh? This was the first thing I'd said all day that I could look back on without being embarrassed.

The giant Jet laughed. "He sounds just like you, Riff!"

Riff grinned. "You know what, he does a bit, back when I was young and innocent."

Tony snorted loudly.

"Well, young, anyway," Riff conceded. "John, you're growing on me, buddy-boy. I think we could use some new blood around here, anyway. Diesel? What d'you think of our boy John here?"

The giant Jet, apparently called Diesel, shrugged. "I like him. With a little time, he could learn to walk with us. And we could do worse, anyway…" he added, giving the girl standing behind Riff a pointed look.

She almost broke the table in half in an attempt to get at Diesel. "You wanna say that for me one more time, smartass?" she snapped, shoving him in the chest. For the record, this had about as much of an effect as if she's shoved the wall. "I could lick ya, blindfolded, you know I could, if you just gave me a chance! I can rumble with the best of 'em!"

Riff groaned and buried his head in his hands. "Jesus…" he muttered. "You just don't go away, do you, girl?"

Another Jet, this one wearing glasses and a melodramatic expression, sighed and shook his head. "Anybodys, remind me again why we put up with you," he murmured. As Anybodys started to respond, he continued, "Or, upon further reflection, don't." He smiled at me and stuck out a hand for me to shake, which I did, feeling like a total idiot. "Snowboy here. Delighted to make your acquaintance, absolutely delighted. Don't pay Anybodys any mind, either. You get used to her. You have to, she just won't leave. Well, John, it looks as though you're one of the boys now, huh? One of the posse, you might say, one of the gang. No pun intended, of course! Remember, we're your family now, son. We stick together like…"

"Snowboy! Lettim breathe!" Riff said, grinning.

"It's all right," I said. "I grew up with three sisters. They'd talk your ear off if you sat still long enough."

Diesel laughed and slapped me on the back. It was amazing I didn't fly straight through the window. "Sisters are all well and good, John, but there ain't a chick alive who's got anything on Snowboy."

Snowboy folded his arms petulantly and glared at Diesel. "Insignificant, uncultured mortal…" he muttered.

Diesel shrugged. "I try, buddy-boy. I try."

Tony cut him off with a word that would have horrified my mom if she'd been close enough to hear. "Cops!" he hissed.

Action grinned, rubbing his hands together, the picture of suspicion. "Perfect," he said.

"C'mon, boys, you know what to do. John, follow my lead. Anybodys, beat it," Riff ordered, sounding, I thought, like a war general or something, issuing orders.

"Ah, come on, dadeo…" Anybodys whined.

"Beat it, Anybodys," Riff snapped.

Anybodys told Riff to go do something that, again, I'm pretty sure he'd have difficulty doing unless he was a professional contortionist as she stomped out the door. All the other Jets ran to separate tables, two or three to each, and launched into randomly fabricated conversations that I don't think made a whole lot of sense to them either. Riff, Tony and I stayed where we were. Tony lit up a cigarette, Riff kicked his feet up on the table, and I just sat there, feeling more and more stupid with each passing second. But hey, that's nothing new.

The door to Doc's slammed open, and two men walked in. One was almost as wide as Diesel was tall (I kid you not), and the other could've easily been eaten by him. Neither of them looked particularly happy, and they both wore the dark blue police uniform of the area.

"Well, well, well, look who it is, John," Tony muttered around the cigarette. "Manhattan's most romantic couple…" I would've laughed, but I hid it behind a cough. I could tell this was the kind of opportunity the Jets dreamed about.

"Top of the day, Lieutenant Schrank!" Riff said, waving brightly.

"And Officer Krupke too! Pleasure," a mousy-looking kid I didn't know said, pulling a fake-bow in his chair.

"A-Rab," Riff whispered, mostly for my benefit.

The giant one, Officer Krupke, glared at A-Rab. "What're you kids doing here?" he growled.

"Oh, we love it here, officer. Keeps us poor deprived kids in a family setting and off the foul city streets. You won't believe the level of crime and delinquency out there," A-Rab said without missing a beat. I would've whistled, had my goal not been to be as inconspicuous as possible. This guy was good.

"Watch it, A-Rab. You ain't fooling us," Krupke snarled.

"How could we hope to, officer? Your excessive brainpower is just too much for our feeble lies to penetrate," Snowboy commented. I could tell Krupke was still stuck on the definition of "excessive", but Schrank jumped to his rescue.

"Don't play games with me boys," he warned. "Listen here. We know what you're up to. This is some kind of war council, we know it is. You're goin' against the Hawks, that ain't no secret. So where's it gonna be?"

Unsurprisingly, no one said anything.

"Oh, come on. Sweeney's lot? The river? I ain't gonna play around much longer. I'll start taking you down to the station until you tell me where you're gonna rumble, one by one, starting with you, Captain Jet," he added, glaring at Riff, who smiled pleasantly back. "You hear me?"

The only sound was Tony, casually driving his cigarette out onto the plastic tabletop.

"Didn't I tell you guys the difference between being a stool pigeon and following the law?" Schrank asked in despair.

Riff grinned, and I could just see the little thought bubble rising above his head: _Bingo._ "Sure you told us, Lieutenant. We put up a collection for the first guy who can figure it out," he said instantly.

Tony and Diesel snorted loudly as Schrank continued to raise his blood pressure. "Hey, you!" he snapped, and I swear on the grave of my still-living mother, he walked _right over to me._ "You're new here, ain't'cha? You wouldn't mind tellin' me where the rumble is, right? I ain't gonna mess with your little friends here," he said.

I just stared at him. Jesus, I do a lot of staring.

"Didn't you hear me?" he demanded.

There was my moment. "Sure I heard you, Lieutennant. I got 20-20 hearing," I said quietly. Riff and Tony laughed out loud.

"I know you know where it's gonna be. Tell me, and I'll go easy. Where's the goddamn rumble with the Hawks already, half-pint?" Schrank sneered.

"There ain't gonna be no rumble, Lieutennant. We don't like to fight with other deprived kids. Can't we all just get along?" I asked in what I hoped was a sincere, innocent voice.

Riff and Tony were still sporting identical idiot grins, and A-Rab winked at me. I wasn't doing too bad… Well, according to the Jets, I wasn't. Schrank didn't look too happy, and Krupke'd had enough,

"Listen, unless you guys tell me what's going on, I'm gonna be demoted to traffic corners. And your friend don't like traffic corners. And when I ain't happy, you ain't happy. Now, we ain't gonna get down on our knees and beg, but if you've got any sense at all, you'd tell us straight out and spare us and the station the headache. I know most of you too well to be stupid enough to think you've got any sense, but you… You I don't know." Krupke fixed me with a squinty-eyed glare. "What's you're name, kid?"

"Baby John," Tony said instantly. Any inclination to rat out the Jets blew away. They accepted me. I had a nickname like everyone else. (Well, except Tony, but that's not the point.) I belonged. I'd never felt like I'd belonged anywhere.

Maybe Krupke sensed my sudden initiation to the ranks of the kids he so hated, because he turned around and stomped out the door without another word. Schrank shot us one last dirty look, which Riff countered with a friendly "Good afternoon, Lieutennant Schrank," before he too made a sullen exit.

The second they were gone, another Jet burst out laughing. "Look at the old fat-ass run! They can probably feel the ground shaking over in the Bronx!" He walked over to me and slapped me on the back. "Hey, Baby John. Big Deal. You're not bad for a first-time Schrank-hazer. I'm impressed. I had my doubts, but you got guts, kid. Welcome to the Jets."

"Should I be complimented or insulted?" I felt the question had to be asked.

Big Deal shrugged. "Maybe a little of both, I guess."

"You guys do that a lot?" I asked, skeptical. The relaxed way they'd provoked two guys with the power to throw them in jail for life had surprised me.

"Our primary source of entertainment, buddy-boy," another Jet I didn't know told me. "They never actually do anything. Cops 'round these parts, they're all badge and no gun."

Riff picked up Tony's pack of cigarettes and threw them across the table at the Jet's head, which by an extreme amount of skill and aim actually connected with his left ear. "Hey!" they both snapped.

"Don't start lying to him without even telling him your name! You're givin' him confidence ain't none of us got a reason to have," he snarled. The mood around the table darkened, but plainly no one but Riff knew exactly why.

"Mouth Piece," the Jet said, by way of introduction. "And Riff… well, he's going paranoid in his old age. Don't pay no attention to him. He thinks every conversation in the street's an assassination attempt. Bit senile, you know?"

"Remember why we called you Mouth Piece in the first place?" Riff shot back, his eyes blazing. "Because every time you opened yours, shit kept falling out." The rest of the Jets cheered as Mouth Piece went red faster than a stoplight. "Bet senile, am I? Remember Ice?"

The room went dead silent. Everyone did. I gave Riff a "what-the-hell?" look. He gave a sort of half-smile and explained. "Ice came along about the time Snowboy did, 'round a year, year and a half ago. Snow and Ice. It was great. Ice was this huge guy, like seven feet tall, two fifty, but he was sweeter than your grandma. A hell of a lot sweeter than my grandma, but that ain't saying shit. The lady beats me over the head with her cane for kicks. But that ain't the point. Everyone loved Ice. He was the best guy to have your back in a fight, loyal as sin. But then Schrank and Krupke came along. Ice was slow, see. Right after our rumble with the Wolves, we scattered, but Ice didn't make it out in time. The cops took him in, put him in the pen for six months. Half a year! Bam! Gone. Just like that. Then he got out, and his old man shipped him off to military school. We never saw him again."

"I did," Big Deal said unexpectedly. Riff gave a start of surprise- evidentially this was news to him, too. "Last week, at the movies, while I was sneaking out."

The Jets all nodded like this was a reasonable explanation.

"Wait, sneaking out of the movies? Why?" I asked.

Big Deal shrugged. "I snuck in."

I nodded. "Right."

"Well, anyway," he went on, "I saw him last week. Looks just like he used to, so I said hi, you know, just like old times. Didn't say a goddamn word. Walked on by with his nose in the air like he really thought he was something big, and then he hit me in the stomach, was all like 'Don't talk to me, punk,' and shit, and breezed on by with his girl like I wasn't even there."

Riff nodded. "That's what I mean, Mouth Piece. Them cops, they find ways to change people. They can make you pay."

Another Jet nodded sagely. "It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, boys, and we're the dogs."

Tony choked on a mouthful of air. "And is that a good thing?" he asked.

The Jet shrugged. "Depends, I guess, on what kind of dog you are. Mastiff, German Shepard, yeah, it's a good thing. Yorkie, poodle, not so much. I hate poodles…" he trailed off, shuddering at some memory he did not seem inclined to divulge.

A-Rab groaned. "That's Gee-Tar, Baby John. Complete psychopathic nutcase. Makes no sense. At all. Ever. But you get used to it."

Gee-Tar waved brightly at me, smiling. "That's me! The psychopathic nutcase. The village idiot, at your service."

I snorted loudly in a particularly stupid-sounding way, but nobody seemed to care. The dramatic mood had crashed and burned, and the rest of the Jets were now laughing or rolling their eyes. I could tell already that among the deadly seriousness that came as part of the job description for being a Jet, Gee-Tar provided the comic relief. He could be serious when he had to be, but he could also lift a depressing mood with one hand. Even though I'd only been here for all of fifteen minutes, I felt like I knew them all now, all the Jets, like they were the brothers I never had… All, that was, but one.

"So who's that?" I asked, pointing at the one Jet left. He was sitting on Doc's counter, kind of half-shadowed in a dramatic and menacing sort of way that he'd obviously put a good deal of thought into.

Riff laughed. "That? That, Baby John, is Tiger."

"Hey," Tiger said, hopping off the counter and walking over. Riff and Tony began to hum the James Bond theme in possibly the most annoying way known to man. Tiger glared. "Welcome to the Jets, Baby John. I'm the real power in this here joint, though. Remember that, and don't let none of these other kids tell you anything different," he said pompously. Riff and Tony changed their tune to Hail to the Chief. Tiger rolled his eyes eloquently. "Idiotic, foolish children that you are," Tiger said loftily, "I ignore you." I cracked up, although in hindsight this was probably not meant to be funny. Tiger sighed deeply. "I'm surrounded by idiots…" he said mournfully.

Snowboy beamed and slung an arm around Tiger's shoulders. "Maybe, my friend, but we're your idiots," he said cheerfully. Everyone laughed at this, not just me.

"Tiger here thinks he's really something special because he's a legal adult with a high school degree," Tony explained to me.

"And even though he knows how to find the area of a triangle, he's still completely useless in a fight," Action added.

"Which only goes to show you that there's two kinds of smart in this world, Baby John, and you'd best remember it. There's his kind of smart, and there's our kind of smart, and you've gotta remember which one to use when," Riff finished. The Jets all gave him poetry snaps, and he took a bow.

"You should write a book, dadeo," Diesel commented.

"I did once, actually…" Riff mused.

"Really?" I asked.

Riff shrugged. "Sure. I was totally wasted and I wrote it on the back of a napkin."

Tony laughed. "And what happened?"

"Well, the main character ended up screwing your mom, then Officer Krupke popped up and ate both of them," Riff explained.

We all gave him The Look number 32- the "wow-you-really-were-wasted-but-that-has-some-serious-potential" look.

Tony groaned. "Let's just hope that's not giving you any ideas..."

Riff waved a hand dismissively. "Of course not. I ain't got no intention at all of being eaten by Krupke."

Tony jumped over the table with a snarl like a lion on the hunt and tackled a stunned Riff to the ground. Within a second, Riff's arm was twisted up behind his back, and he gave a tiny little yelp like a dog with his tail stepped on.

"All right! All right! Uncle! Uncle!" Riff yelped, and Tony let him up.

"Watch it, or next time, buddy-boy…" Tony warned.

"Next time… It's always 'next time' for you, Tony," Riff sighed, picking himself up and brushing the dirt off his pants. "You're just like tomorrow, you know?" He, A-Rab, and Snowboy burst into song_. "Tomorrow! It's always a day away!"_

"You won't live to see tomorrow if you don't shut up…" Tony muttered.

Riff shook his head in mock-distress and put a hand on Tony's shoulder. "You worry me, Tony. I didn't think you'd be like this, so serious and depressed. Four whole years I live with a guy and his family, you'd think I'm diggin' his character. Boy, I'm a victim of disappointment in you…"

Tony laughed and pushed Riff away.

"It's been four and a half years now, genius," he said.

"You don't say? Well, time flies when you're having fun," Riff replied, totally unconcernedly.

Just as Riff finished his sentence, the door to the back room banged open, crashing into the opposite wall like a small explosion, and Doc stomped into the front room.

"You kids still here?" he demanded.

"Well, sure we are, Doc," Mouth Piece said brightly. "You know how we love it here."

"I know how you love what you do here, and how I don't stop you," Doc corrected, "but unless you're gonna buy something, then get. You're scaring all my business away."

A-Rab grinned and switched to a mystic voice, waving his arms around like a restless ghost. "Ooooh…. We are the ghosts of Doc's Drugstore… We will eat paying customers alive… Ooooh…." he said, then continued in his regular voice, "Don't kid yourself, Doc, we are your business. No one knows this joint's here, 'cept for us and the cops. And the schizophrenic guy who buys coffee on Wednesday mornings."

"Yeah? You've seen him too? And here I was, thinking I was totally losing my marbles…" Doc mused. I shook my head. Sweet guy, Doc, but sometimes he makes you wonder… "No, really, though, you're right, boy. What I need is a sign. A big ol' sign on the front wall… _Doc's Drugstore_, done all up in skywriting… Yeah. That's what I'm gonna do. Now seriously, get!"

Tony sighed. "Just when I start to feel loved around here… Jeez, Doc. I feel so crushed. Come on, guys." He shoved his chair back, snapped his fingers once, and all the Jets stood up in one collective motion and moved out the door, almost like a well-rehearsed synchronized swimming competition. You know, except without the water. And the lameness.

"Oh no, Tony, you did not just snap," Riff muttered, the only one besides me that hadn't moved. Once the drugstore was completely Jet-less (I still couldn't get used to counting myself as a Jet), Riff turned to me and stood up, leaning forward on the table and talking, his voice serious.

"All right then, Baby John, three rules of being a Jet," he began, as we walked out into the street. "One, the non-verbal crap. When I snap, you come. When Tony snaps, do me a favor and ignore him, would ya? He's taking this co-leader schtick a little far. Power's going to his head."

I blinked. Tony? A power-mongering insubordinate? Please. Maybe there was some secret gang lingo going on here that I wasn't getting, or some other Tony. But I wasn't about to voice this to Riff; you didn't interrupt him while he was talking. You just didn't.

"Then, there's the Jet whistle."

"The what, now?"

Riff sighed and whistled three quick notes. "That. When you hear somebody whistle, it kinda means something like 'Jets- assemble!'. Only in less cheesy words."

"Kind of like the Bat signal," I interjected wisely.

Riff looked at me like I was spewing some foreign language that was hitherto unknown to man.

"Um… never mind…" I said sheepishly, wishing that I could melt into the pothole I was walking over.

Riff shrugged and went on. "Anyway... You can use that if you're in trouble. If you get cornered, lost, ganged up on, whatever, someone's gonna respond with this." He whistled the first lick again, only this time the third note kind of slid down into a fourth one. "You can whistle, right?"

I answered by whistling the response.

Riff nodded his approval. "We'll work on it. Number two. You know what a gang does, kid? We take our piece of the world, our piece of the street, and we hold it. We hold it from the Hawks, the Bloods, anybody that comes up, we protect it against them. With our fists, with our words, with your life if you've gotta. Whatever it takes. I don't expect much trouble soon, though. I mean, we just fucking killed them Emeralds, we're staking our claim loud and clear. We're pissing on the metaphorical tree of Manhattan, and people who matter, they don't mess with that."

I gave him a confused look. "_'Pissing on the metaphorical tree of Manhattan'_?"

Laughing, Riff shrugged sheepishly. "So much for hoping you didn't hear that… Onward, then? Three. Anybodys. Don't let her talk you into being a Jet. Ever."

"Why?"

Riff shook his head ruefully. "Boy, if you've gotta ask, you don't get to know."

Both our heads snapped up like spooked rabbits as a sharp sound echoed down the narrow alley we were making our way down. I knew what it was instantly; judging by the expression of unequivocal horror spanning his pointed face, Riff did too. Three swiftly whistled notes, embodying as much panic as it was possible for three notes to do.

"Shit!" Riff muttered, and he bolted down the alley, vaulting the trash can behind Antonio's Pasta House. "Shit, shit, shit…"

I took off after him, having the presence of mind to whistle the response, as Riff's attention was obviously elsewhere. Jesus, that kid was fast! We turned onto a side street, jumped a chain-link fence into an abandoned lot, weaving our way through a game of basketball, jumping the fence on the opposite side, tearing down 4th avenue. I was panting for breath, clutching the mother of all stitches in my side…

And then, all of a sudden, Riff stopped dead. My feet couldn't stop fast enough, and I crashed right into him, sending his scrawny frame flying to the ground. He swore again and stood up, staring ahead, and finally I saw what he was looking at. A group of four people were standing opposite the Jets. One of them, a greasy-looking guy in a leather jacket with a wannabe-Elvis hairdo was talking to Tony, and as we steadily approached them we could hear what they were saying.

"Yes, you heard us, kid," Elvis-man was saying in a thick Hispanic accent. "Get off this street. This is our place now."

Riff's shoulders stiffened at these words, but Tony gave a harsh laugh. "Your place? Yours? This is so ridiculous."

"You said it, man! This has been our street for five years now, ain't no mariachi band gonna show up now and take it from under our noses!" Action snapped. I wasn't sure that was exactly what Tony meant, as he flipped Elvis-man the finger and stormed off down the street.

"We will ask you one more time. Then we will tell you. Get lost, children. Playtime is over," Elvis-man said smoothly.

Riff swept over and took Tony's antagonistic spot right under his opponent's nose, hissing, "Action, I got this," before rounding back on the new guy. I went and stood next to Diesel- no way anybody'd see me next to six feet seven inches of him. I mean, I wasn't ready to fight these guys! I'd thought I'd at least have some time to get used to things, to prepare, you know…

"Well, well, well, boys, who have we got here?" Riff asked the Jets smoothly, not taking his eyes off of Elvis-man. "Señores, I think you might be lost. Spanish district's that way."

"Who are you?" Elvis-man demanded.

"Me? My boys call me dadeo round these streets," Riff snapped back, obviously offended at this lack of recognition. Even I, not quite the quickest on the draw when it came to gang-speak, understood that to mean "leader" by this point.

"Your sons don't look much like you, I note…" the other guy said dryly.

Riff grinned wickedly. "Different gal every time, see. The name's Riff. Remember that. And who are you supposed to be? Zorro?" he drawled disdainfully, eyeing his all-black clothes and oh-so-Spanish aura.

"Bernardo," he said shortly. "And this is my gang. The Sharks. And this is our street."

Riff shrugged. "You in charge here, Nardo? Good. Then listen up. You're playing with fire now, here. This is Jet territory. Oh, for chrissake, Jets. You heard of us?"

"Can't say we have."

"Well, let me fill you in. We run this joint, we do. We're the power here. People, they don't mess with us. Since you boys are new here, I'll let you off with a warning. Stay away from us, if you know what's good for you. Now, I'm gonna ask you real nice. Beat it. Por favore?" Riff sneered.

Bernardo was glaring flames at him, but he didn't even blink at this.

"Well, Nardo? What's it gonna be?" Diesel asked disdainfully. Dammit… I thought. I hide next to the one guy who just has to open his mouth. Great.

"What do we say, Sharks?" Bernardo asked, and went on without waiting for an answer. "We say you'd better put your money where your mouth is. You want us to give this up, you'll have to make us."

"Believe me," A-Rab said graciously, bowing, "it will be our pleasure."

"Four on four, though," another Shark said. "We're not taking on twelve to four odds."

"Eleven to four," Big Deal corrected. "She's just kinda here."

"Oh, come on, guys, let me…" Anybodys began.

"No, Anybodys," Snowboy sighed.

"But what if I…"

"No, Anybodys!" Riff snarled, looking like he meant business. Anybodys yelled something that I won't repeat for the sake of any little children that might be present as she left.

"So, Action," Riff asked lightly, as if nothing had just happened, "Who're you thinking?" I could, for once, follow his train of thought here. Action was about four foot nothing, and the only way he could beat the Sharks was if they all decided to drop dead of spontaneous heart attacks, so letting him choose was the fairest way.

"Um… Diesel, and Big Deal, and… uh…" Action paused, a grin spreading across his face. "You and Baby John, these guys look like pansies."

Honestly, I don't know where my mind went then. Sporadic insanity or something, must be. But I nodded. Honest to God.

"Let's do this," I said, my voice bizarrely strong.

Riff glared at Action. "Fair enough, but I'll be talking to you about that last comment later…" he snapped, and Action just smiled like an idiot.

"Ladies first," Big Deal said with a polite smile.

And that was all it took. The Sharks pounced. Bernardo jumped at Riff, who ducked, and one of the nameless Sharks leapt at me. I sidestepped him, and he swung at my head, but I ducked and he went flying past.

"Why did I do this?" I muttered to myself as he spun around. "God, I'm such an idiot!" I tried to hit him as he came back. Missed. Ducked. Kicked out. There we go. That one connected. That felt… _good!_ Really good. On my part, anyway.

"Is that the best you've got, hombre?" Riff laughed, dancing out of Bernardo's reach. "Come on, my momma hit better than that!"

"You'll be singing a different song later," Bernardo snarled through bared teeth.

I snapped back to my Shark, and tried to hit again. Maybe I'd watched too many action movies to compensate for my lack of a life, because I knew exactly where to aim for. He was down (and probably sterile), and my foot was back to do it again…

But then I heard it. The police siren echoed down the street.

Riff leapt to his feet and let Bernardo up from the ground. "Run!" he yelled.

Didn't have to tell me twice. I didn't look back to see what the rest of the Jets did. I kept running, all the way across the West Side, my heart pounding every step of the way. I didn't stop running until I'd flown up four flights of stairs and shot into my living room like a cannonball.

My mom was sitting there, knitting something yellow and shapeless as she looked up at me with a vapid smile.

"Hello, John," she said, "You're home early, aren't you? How was your day?"

I shrugged boredly. "Oh, you know. The usual."

* * *

There you go. This will probably be the longest chapter (it is so far, and I've written a few ahead of time). Actually, in hindsight, I got a little carried away with this one. 

But aside from the kind of ridiculous length, please review! Reviews are delicious. Just like the burritos from Taco Bell. Also very delicious.

Review!!!! ...please?

-RebelFaerie-


	2. Chino: Yes, Senora

Guess who still owns nothing? Good guess.

A quick response to my lovely, lovely reviewer, Crezia:

Have I mentioned that you're awesome? Seriously. You are. And thanks, too! I just wanted to develop the Jets, because, really, all that wonderful potential for characters to be as sweet as Riff and they get one or two lines each. This is sad. Speaking of which, I interspersed some lines from the original whenever I found myself drifting out of character, but if you don't think I need that… Well, that feels good. There are some more original lines in here, though, mostly just because I like them. They make me giggle. Like Tickle Me Elmo. Even though it's designed for 2-5-year-olds, it still brings a smile to my face. Every time.

Anyway. Shall we continue?

Why am I asking you? I'm alone in my basement, miles away from anyone who could possibly answer me at the moment. But hey! I'm going to ask you anyway. Shall we continue?

Why yes, indeed, we certainly shall.

**

* * *

**

**Chino-**

**Yes, Senora**

"Let me introduce you to the characters

in the show.

One says yes, one says no.

Decide

which voice in your head you can keep alive.

Even in madness I know you still believe.

Paint me on canvas so I'd become

what you could never be…"

_-Shinedown, I Dare You-_

The second we heard that police siren wail in the distance, we ran for it. We didn't need Riff to tell us, we were gone before he was finished saying the word. I ran, fast as I could, feeling my heart pounding with exertion and fear. I saw Bernardo flying along next to me, and I almost laughed. Almost. Panic and Bernardo were like oil and water, they just did not mix.

We kept going, through the city I still viewed as foreign as China, until Nardo put out a hand and stopped me short.

"Do not let Maria know about this," he said darkly, breathing hard. "Tell her whatever you want, just not this. Or Anita. I will tell them. They will not like this."

I nodded. When had I ever told Maria anything? Of course, Bernardo did not know that. He and Anita had paid for my passage to Manhattan because they thought I loved Maria. Certainly they thought she loved me. Here, we could be married without bullets whizzing past our heads on our wedding day. Or so they thought. It seemed that three things in life were certain; death, taxes, and bullets. The three universal truths. I didn't have the heart to tell either of them, my best friend in the world or his self-professed "better half", the real reason why I had agreed to come along.

Nardo and I walked the rest of the way to the glass-and-brick storefront. Not my store, of course, that godforsaken general store down off of Second Street that I worked three days a week at to pay Bernardo back for my ticket. Nothing in the world could make me go back there until hell froze over. We stood in front of Anita and Maria's store. Bernardo swaggered right on in like he owned the place, like he hadn't just been in a fight, like the black eye he sported wasn't there. I stood on the outside, looking in. It was a skill of mine, to be six feet away from a group of people I counted as my greatest friends, and to still feel sixty thousand miles away, on a warm beach, the sun shining down on my face, the ocean roaring against the sand…

Maria was inside, just within the window, sewing a particularly hideous dress (though I would not have told her that myself…), laughing with Anita. She was positively glowing with happiness, with contentment. I didn't want that to stop by my going in. That expression she wore every time she saw me, I didn't want to see that. I could not face it.

"Chino!" Bernardo snapped back at me. "Are you coming?"

"But…" I said, floundering for words. "This is a shop for ladies," I finished lamely, but Bernardo bought it.

"Yes, but they're our ladies," he said with a laugh. "Come on!"

I sighed and followed him into the store. Maria and Anita both snapped their heads to look over at us, like a gazelle alert for any noise of an approaching predator. It would have almost been funny, had Maria's smile not fallen through the floor of the shop when he saw me. As I knew it would.

"Have you been fighting, Nardo?" Anita demanded at once, staring at his eye as though it were the divine word of The Lord. Bernardo swept up to put an arm around her shoulders, but she pulled away, glaring.

"What, not even a hello for your long-lost husband?" he asked with a small pout.

"Oh, no, senor, it will not work this time! Tell me what is going on, or I will write to your mother about last night in the balcony at the movies!" Anita challenged.

"All right! All right! I will tell you," Bernardo interjected hurriedly.

Again, I very nearly laughed, but again I didn't. This was, after all, Manhattan. There is nothing to laugh about here.

"Chino?" Anita said sharply.

"Yes?" I said politely, like a good, respectable half-brother-in-law, or something along those obscure lines that I can't quite follow.

"Take Maria home, please. I need to talk to Nardo. Alone."

"Yes," I said, feeling more like a broken record, cracked down the middle in the crucial space where it mattered, deep on the inside where no one could see. Yes, Anita. Yes, Bernardo. Yes, Maria. Heaven forbid I say no. Because I am that nice boy, Maria. That nice boy where nothing happens when you look at him. The boy you came here to marry, Maria. That's all.

"Come on," I said softly, half to Maria, half to myself. She got up, threw Anita a nasty look, and stalked out after me.

We took the familiar back roads, the only roads in this city that I could truly claim that I knew, the ones from the store to home. All roads beginning and ending with Maria. There is something to be said for that. "I'm sorry about this," I told her quietly.

This set her off, as I knew it would. Even her yelling, scolding, chastising, anything was better than this stony silence. "You are always sorry, Chino! Always! You have never done anything to be sorry for, and yet you are sorry! We are not in San Juan anymore! You are free to say what you think now. Just once, I'd like to see you take advantage of that. Scream! Swear! For Christ's sake, Chino, say no! Just do not be like you were in there, the perfect little delivery boy. I do not think I can stand it!"

Hearing her voice my own thoughts hurt me, though I could not possibly explain why. She did not understand, there were things in this world that did not concern her, someone had to show her that! I wanted to hurt her back. I hated wanting it, but it was like a physical need within my body, and I could no more prevent it than stop the sun from rising.

"Would you like me, then, to tell you what Nardo is telling Anita now? Do you want to know what he and I, and Pepe and Toro, what we did?" I stopped walking to stare at her. She, taken completely aback, nodded mutely. "The four of us were fighting. Who? The Jets. That gang that walks these streets, sneers down their noses at us when they pass us as we walk to work, those same boys that plaster their names in graffiti all over these buildings, as though we are trespassing by simply looking at them. We are standing up to them. This is too much for us. We have had enough, and we are fighting back. Yes, we. Your precious Nardo, he almost killed a boy today in that fight. He did not. Not today. But tomorrow? Who knows?"

My voice had risen in my anger, and soon I found myself shouting, possibly at the loudest pitch my words had ever found themselves since we'd left San Juan. Before this it had always been a revered whisper. "_Yes. I understand. I will. Of course_." No longer.

Maria said nothing. She reached out her hand and brushed the rising bruise on the left side of my face. "And what is this, 'Yes-Senora' Chino?" she asked sadly. "What is happening to you?"

I laughed coldly, the bitterness in the sound surprising even me. "If I knew, Maria. If I only knew." I paused, and when we started walking again, towards our home, I began to speak, slowly, reaching opinions and decisions that had been weighing on my mind for weeks. "It's this place, Maria. You, me, Nardo… all of us. It's changing us. I don't understand how or why. But I don't like it. And I want to go home."

Maria laughed and pointed at the dingy grey apartement building we were approaching. "But we are home, Chino."

"No," I said darkly, as we entered the building. "This is not home. This will never be home. San Juan, now that, that is my home. Do you remember San Juan, Maria?" I asked as we walked upstairs, past the graffitied walls, proclaiming the eternal love of B.U. and R.R., past doors, all of them the same, closed, locked.

"Oh, Chino, I remember. Perhaps it is you who has forgotten," Maria said to me, as we let ourselves into her apartment. "I remember the bullets flying past our house, that one-room, tiny excuse for a house that had to hold the eight of us. You, me, Nardo, Anita, mama, papa, your brother Toro, and Abuela, all of us in that one tiny room, listening to the planes flying over us, the guns firing outside the window, the screams of our friends and neighbors. Yes, Chino. I remember."

We walked over to the balcony looking over the fire escape, staring out at the dirty monochromatic street. "You are remembering Anita's San Juan," I said, with a wry smile. "But do you remember mine? The sun… My God, Maria, have we seen the sun once since we have come to New York? Not the weak little spots of light coming through the buildings, but the _sun_, warm, bright, shining through to your very soul? Do you remember it on the beaches, when the warm wind would be blowing the waves, and the boys would play football on the beach? And the birds flying overhead, and the women chatting and laughing and watching their children play in the surf? Yes, Maria, I remember the guns in San Juan. But the guns here are equally as hard to forget. Better the danger you understand than the danger you don't."

"Then why did you leave?" Maria asked wryly. "Why did you come here, Chino, if it is all as awful as you say?"

I gave her a pointed look. "You know why." I sighed and looked out at the pigeons pecking at a hamburger bun in the middle of the road.

"Who is it?" Maria asked abruptly.

I flinched and looked at her in disbelief. "What?" I demanded. Of all the questions I had been anticipating, that had not been one of them.

"Oh, come on, Chino," Maria laughed, pushing me playfully on the shoulder. "I know you don't think so, but I'm not completely useless. You've been avoiding me, my dear fiancé, and I know why. Go on. I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours."

I felt as though a giant weight had been lifted off of my back, a weight that had steadily been crushing me. _There was someone else… _"You first," I said, trying to disguise the relief that was flooding my body.

"I do not know his name, actually," she admitted, a dreamy sort of look coming across her face. "I have seen him around many times, but I've always been too afraid to talk to him. He seems a perfect gentleman, but there is something in his friends that I do not trust."

"Who are his friends?" I asked, hoping to in a roundabout way land on the man.

"You've seen them, I've been informed," she said with a grim smile. "They call themselves the Jets."

The weight that had just been lifted off of my shoulders crashed back down again, nearly knocking me through the fire escape and into the road beneath. "The Jets?" I demanded.

"Yes, you heard me, Chino. Congratulations. Do you want me to test your other four senses?" Maria asked me sarcastically.

"But I…" I stammered.

"You are a Shark. Yes. But I'm not marrying you, now am I?"

I smiled. That was my Maria. You never had to make difficult decisions with her; it was as obvious as the nose on your face. We did not love each other. So we would not be married. No messy disowning from our families, no tear-jerking explanations. It was that simple. To her. "No. You are not," I went on, trying to make her understand. "But you will always be Bernardo's sister. No amount of time in America will change that. And he will be a Shark until the day he dies."

Maria looked at me, and I stopped talking, suddenly abashed. What was I saying? I was worse than my father. "I'm sorry," I said, and this time Maria understood that I had to say it, that I meant it. "After all," I added, laughing, "mine is not really that much better."

Maria gave me her version of The Look. I noticed that most of the Puerto Ricans I had come to know and love in Manhattan had developed their own interpretation of The Look. No one could possibly compare to Anita, but more on that later, I assume.

"Well, Chino? I did tell you mine," she pouted, like she was my little sister instead of Bernardo's. I remembered when we both lived in San Juan, this was how Maria had been. Closer to me than to Bernardo, Anita had said. She could tell me anything, she admitted. It was like we were two parts of the same person, I had thought. They must be married, everyone had said. Meddling relatives, that was one thing I had not been sad to leave behind in Puerto Rico. They had all thought the same way. A boy and a girl are friends, the best of friends, then bam! They must be married.

"It's kind of a long story," I said halfheartedly.

Maria grinned and sat down on the fire escape, then indicated I should do the same. I did, avoiding the splatters of pigeon excrement that seemed to cover every stationary surface in the city. "I've got time," she said pleasantly.

I groaned. Just like Anita. She was never going to give up. "You remember Indio, don't you?"

Maria's eyes nearly dropped out of her head. "You're breaking off your engagement with me for _Indio?_" she cried. "I didn't know you were… that you liked…"

"No, it's not Indio," I said quickly. "You remember his father was a high-ranking official in San Juan? No, it's not Indio's father, either, Maria. Please, in the Lord's name, let me finish! Things will not be quite so awkward that way, understand?"

"Sorry," she said, though a wicked smile was crossing her face.

"Anyway, you remember that I had a job as a delivery boy in Puerto Rico as well. I would make deliveries to him all the time, and he was devastatingly kind to me. He knew I lived with your family ever since my parents had died, and every so often he would supply me with an extra-generous tip for no particular reason. Yes. A good man, Indio's father. But deliveries and tips were not the sole reasons I spent so much time at that house. You see, Indio had a sister."

Maria gasped. "Estella?" she breathed disbelievingly.

"Yes," I said, "Estella."

"So why then did you leave?" Maria asked. "You had everything you needed there. A woman that you loved and that loved you, a job, a house… What could New York have to offer you?"

I sighed. "You see, here is where the story gets long. Indio's father knew me as that boy who lived with the Martinez family. That boy to be pitied, with nowhere to go, Chino Rivera, that delivery boy with no foreseeable future, but polite enough to put up with. I had never approached him before about his daughter. I never mentioned it to Indio, and obviously not to Bernardo, as you see. I should have. I know that now. But our love grew in secret, growing quickly in snatched moments when her father was out, in back deserted alleys and stolen hours talking in the dead of the night at the beach.

"I should have told someone. But I did not," I went on bitterly. "Because I am a coward, Maria, I did not. I never said a word. But one day came when I knew I could wait no longer. Estella came to my house, to our house. You remember that, don't you, Maria? The look of panic, of terror on her face? I remember you asked her if she had been shot. Do you want to know what had happened, Maria?" I asked, my expression harder than it should have been, angry, accusing, though she had done nothing wrong.

"Tell me," she said gently. I had never told anyone before. I was sure I never would. And yet, somehow, the words were pouring out of me like a waterfall, vast and cold and unstoppable.

"Estella was pregnant. The child was mine."

She stared at me, her eyes wide, at a complete loss for words. The silence hung there for a moment, deafening, smothering, suffocating. I had to say something, but for a moment I was unable to speak. The image of a small boy, with my Estella, my beautiful Estella's large dark eyes, staring up at me from the warm Puerto Rican waves, had struck me like a blow to the face, and there was nothing I could say. I was a coward. I had run away.

_Coward_, the cooing of the pigeons in the street seemed to sneer up at me. The wind dancing through the fire escape seemed to whisper it too, the muffled voices from apartment 6B laughing and jeering it at my back. _Chino, you coward. All you have ever done is run and apologize and hide._

_Coward…_

"We told him together," I went on woodenly, my voice not my own, hollow and emotionless. "I could not bear to face him alone. We explained what had happened. I asked to marry her. I promised I could provide for her, that I would raise the child, that everything would be all right. I begged his forgiveness. I begged his permission."

"He did not refuse," Maria said incredulously, looking at me as though she had never seen a man like me before.

I laughed, a hard, hollow laugh. "Oh, you didn't honestly think he'd accept someone like me, did you? Of course he refused. But he did so much more than that. He forbid me to ever speak to her again. He had me fired from my job. He assured me I would never find work anywhere else on the island. As the crowning glory, he had me beaten to his floor until I was bleeding on the marble entrance hall, and then he had me thrown from the gate into the street. Thrown. Like a dog. Like a pile of garbage, he threw me into the street. And I have never been back."

"And then you left?"

"I left. Because I was a coward. Because Bernardo and Anita gave me a ticket away from that life, from my shame, from my failure. I ran away, and I never gave a look back."

"Oh, Chino…" Maria murmured. "I'm… I'm sorry…"

I smiled. "Ah, you see, now it is you who has done nothing to be sorry for, yet is sorry," I said lightly. She put her arms around me, and I gave her a gentle hug back, feeling a little of the weight that had sat so oppressively on my heart all these months begin to lift. She had always been like this to me; Maria was like the sister I never had.

But someone else thought differently. "Oh, pure, sweet, innocent Maria!" a voice squealed from behind me. "You are learning fast about Americans, are you not?"

The two of us jumped about four solid feet apart to see Rosalia standing in the doorway of the balcony, a massive smile of ill intent covering her entire face.

"What do you mean?" Maria asked tightly, though I could tell that she wanted nothing more than for this girl to leave. And quickly.

"Well, you see, here in America," Rosalia said slyly, "There is this quaint little custom where couples get married before the wedding night…"

I stood up abruptly, my face burning, Maria pointedly not looking my way. "I will see you later, then, Maria?" I asked quickly, not waiting for an answer as I pushed my way past Rosalia and out into the hallway.

"Buenos dias, lover-boy!" she crowed after me. I slammed the door hard after my retreating back, my face still hot with embarrassment. The temptation to haul off and throw something at her was overwhelming, yet I stalked off silently down the stairs, fuming…

And directly into Anita.

"Oh my… Sorry!" I said quickly, helping her back up. _There you go again, Chino_, I thought, _being sorry. Old habits die hard…_ "Are you all right?"

"No thanks to you," she snapped, giving me The Look, though whether it had been brought about by my sudden appearance or Bernardo's news, I couldn't be quite sure. Nothing good ever came from Anita's look. Executions were ordered, children were murdered in the streets, marriages were arranged, cities were burned. Death, destruction, despair. A grown man of eighteen and this look still made my flesh crawl. It was pathetic.

"Maria is inside, and I must be going…" I said hastily, starting down the stairs, but Anita had grabbed ahold of the back of my shirt and yanked me back.

"Oh, no, Chino, I am not through with you," she snarled, like a cornered jackal. "We need to talk."

What I really needed to do was run for the hills as fast as my legs could carry me, but she had not yet let go of my shirt. "Oh, do we?" I asked vaguely.

"Yes. About the Sharks."

"Ah," I said intelligently. "I see you've been talking to Bernardo."

"It's an old habit, seeing as how we are married…" Anita said dryly. "I do not want to see you in any more fights, Chino. Ever. You were never like this in San Juan, and you know that. You were such a nice boy. Maria adored you. You have changed, and now she will scarcely even speak to you. New York has done strange things to you, and I don't like it. I hardly even know you anymore."

I don't know what happened to me then. All I know is that something inside me, stretched to the breaking point for weeks, suddenly snapped. "You never knew me, Anita," I hissed. "Never, so do not pretend you did. All this talk about me changing, when it is you who has really changed." Anita stared at me as though I had slapped her across the face (which, come to think of it, I had narrowly avoided doing).

"Remember who you are talking to! Remember who it was who paid for your passage to America!" she said, angry and stunned.

I gave her a cold smile. "So who are we to blame for what New York is doing to me? Do not try to tell me what to do, Anita. It is my life I am living, not yours. Remember that." And I shook her roughly off me and stormed down the stairs.

My mind was in some kind of cloud as I stalked down the stairs and out into the street. I didn't really know what was going on until I felt another hand on my shoulder, grabbing at me, slowing me down. That fragile thing inside me shattered again, and I turned without thinking and hit whoever it was in the face.

"Can't you see that I don't… Oh, shit…" I muttered.

It was Bernardo.

"Nardo, I'm… Are you okay?" I asked helplessly, giving him a hand up. He took it, grinning and shaking his head in mock distress.

"You're just a regular hurricane of destruction today, aren't you, Chino?" he asked wryly.

I shrugged. "Something like that."

"Nice right hook, too. That one, I'll feel it in the morning," he said, wincing. "That was good, to see you stand up to Anita. I'm proud of you. You didn't tell Maria about… you know… did you?"

"No," I said instantly. _Dios mía,_ I thought, _the sins just keep piling up. Adultery, assault, armed threats, and now blatant, flat-out lying. Confession would be one hell of a good time come Sunday._

"Good," Bernardo said simply. "Because, speaking of that, I want to show you something."

I didn't reply. I just followed him, down streets without names, through alleys and parking lots, until he stopped in a dark, shadowed alley. I could see eight men, standing, watching me, waiting.

"Welcome," Bernardo said shortly, "to the Sharks."

I looked around in surprise. _Where had he…?_ But then I understood; I knew them all, but to have them all here was unbelievable. Pepe and Toro, from this morning, but also Luis and Juano, who I'd worked with in San Juan. Moose and Anxious and Nibbles, three of Bernardo's best friends, and… I stared at the last man, willing the Lord to not let me pass out.

It was Indio.

"Hey, Chino, my man," he said, smacking me on the back, unaware of the effect his sudden appearance was having on me or the reason for it.

I managed a quick "Hey,", then all but shouted, before I lost the nerve to ask, "Did your whole family come with you?"

Indio, thinking I was referring to the somewhat disastrous farewell I'd given his dear father, replied, "Si, Chino, I'm sorry. But he's always busy. You probably won't see him much."

I nodded. Maybe I said something, I don't know. But I remember what I was thinking.

Maybe New York won't be so bad after all.

* * *

You guys know what to do... coughcoughcoughREVIEWcoughcoughcough 

Oh, I'm subtle...

-RebelFaerie-


	3. Tony: Born Lucky

**Disclaimer:** Nope. None of this is mine. None of this will be mine in the relatively near future. You know, just in case you were wondering.

**Author's Note:** I'm a little skeptical as to the quality of this chapter. I mean, it's got its moments, but I don't know. Maybe I've just been away too long. Maybe, also, I just don't like Tony. Yeah, I think that's it. I just figured he deserved a chapter because, you know, this _is_ West Side Story, which is difficult to pull off without Tony. This segment is just really another pathetic excuse for me to get to talk about Riff more, because if you've been paying any attention it comes as no surprise that I worship Riff and the very ground upon which he stands. He is my Riff. Mine. –_Growls possessively_- Well. Anyway. Away!!!

* * *

**Three-**

**Tony:**

**Born Lucky**

"_Can't take the kid from the fight, take the fight from the kid_

_Sit back, relax, sit back, relapse again…"_

Panic! at the Disco, Nails for Breakfast, Tacks for Snacks

"_Finally_

_I'm letting go of all my downer thought_

_in this town there'll be one less sad robot_

_looking for the chance to be something more than just metal…"_

Jack's Mannequin, Miss Delaney

It was awhile before I decided to go back home. I don't really know why; I mean, after I walked out on Riff and the guys, I didn't really think, "okay, Tony, man, let's breeze on over to Doc's and pick up a job application". Never even crossed my mind. Who knows why I do things.

I started walking back the way we'd came, and in the back of my mind I heard Action and Riff and a voice I didn't know yelling, but I ignored them. Hey, wasn't my problem. It was so stupid, I was thinking. All this fighting over a little tiny spit of street? I knew how seriously the rest of the Jets took it. It was ridiculous. It was beyond a war game for my friends, it was a full-blown war, their entire lives now. What did it matter who owned the street, really? Owned, yeah, don't get me started. You could own the street all you wanted, but Schrank and Krupke could still throw you off it with one dirty look. All our talk of walking tall and protecting our turf, who did we think we were kidding? We didn't have nothing to protect except our own apartments, and half of us didn't even have that.

The police sirens went off, startling me out of my thoughts. I heard Riff give the order to beat it, and the footsteps of both gangs who listened to him moving progressively farther and farther away from me, from anything I understood. Again, I didn't look back. Why? I wouldn't see anything I understood anyway. It still wasn't my problem.

_With any luck it never would be again, _I thought as I entered Doc's store. The man himself was sitting at the counter, balancing the register. He gave me his Watch-It-Kid-Cause-I-Don't-Trust-You-And-I-Never-Will-So-Don't-Try-Any-Funny-Business Look, the one that had become as famous as he was, over a handful of fives.

"Didn't I tell you guys to beat it, Tony? Didn't I tell you I'd had enough of playing sanctuary for your stupid war games?" he asked, irritated, putting the fives back in the drawer like he thought just seeing the money was giving me ideas.

"Hello to you too, Doc," I muttered, sitting down on a stool behind the counter. Doc gave me a weird look; maybe he could tell what I was thinking by the way I held my head in my hands like it was going to split in two from the pressure of my thoughts. "They're not my stupid war games anymore, don't try to tell me they are. I don't want to even think about them right now. I quit the Jets."

Doc stared at me like I'd just explained to him that I was secretly Elvis Presley in disguise. "You what? ... You haven't told them yet, have you?"

"And if by 'them', you mean Riff, then no," I sighed. "I've been avoiding that for the last few minutes. They probably kind of know by now, though, seeing as how I just walked out on them in the middle of a fight, so…"

"They're not gonna like that," Doc sighed, shaking his head.

"Nah, really? I thought they'd have me knighted," I snapped.

Doc sighed again; he was more than used to me making sarcastic comments at everything he said to me, it was no big deal. He could dish it out as well as he took it. "Unless you came down here to give me the evening news, Tony, what do you want?" he asked. "Much as I know you love my company, I'm sure there's places you'd rather be…"

I paused for a second. What did I want? I wanted so many things that I could never tell him. I wanted to make something of my life. I wanted to be able to wake up in the morning, look myself in the mirror, and see someone my dad would have been proud of for once. I wanted to keep my family off the streets. I wanted to keep the Jets, on top of all that. But right now… "I wanted to get a job here, Doc," I said.

He stared at me. "No way. Tony the Jet looking for a job? Next it'll start to rain fire, and we'll get blasted with shitloads of locusts, and…" he began, stunned.

"Yeah, yeah, I know, just like old times. But seriously, Doc. You need some help running this place, cleaning up, getting your name back on the map like I know you want to. I need something to do for the rest of the summer, I'm bored out of my mind with my life. What d'you say? Lots of kids get summer jobs, why am I so different?" It was a stupid question. Doc and I both knew why I was so different, but thankfully he didn't say anything. "Doc, just for a second, pretend I'm just Tony. Not Tony the Jet. What would you say then?" I finally tried.

Doc gave me a look for a second, and then with a shrug he finally smiled. "I'd say yes. If you really were just Tony," he added seriously. "But I don't know if I can believe you anymore."

"Trust me, Doc," I said seriously. "I've changed."

"Yeah, and I'm Mary, Queen of the Scots," Doc snorted. "You can take the kid out of the fight, but it's a hell of a lot harder to take the fight out of the kid."

"Although you do your best anyway," I agreed with a smile.

Doc grinned. "Damned if I don't. Okay. I'll give you a shot."

I smiled and shook his hand, ecstatic. "Sweet. You won't regret this, Doc," I said quickly.

"Mmhmm. I'll believe that when I see it, kid," he muttered. "What the hell am I thinking?"

"I don't know, Doc," I sighed with a mock-clueless shrug. "Do you _ever_ think?"

Doc glared at me and nailed me in the head with the nearest projectile weapon on hand, which happened to be a plastic bottle of ketchup. Whoa! Doc's got a mean arm for an old man. "Watch your mouth, kid! You're still on probation," he snapped. I ducked under the counter for sanctuary. This was going to be a tough gig to pull off. It would be worth it, though.

Right?

* * *

Two or three hours later, I was remarkably still alive as I walked out of Doc's store and into the sunset, feeling a little bit like the triumphant cowboy (only minus the twelve-gauge and the horse). I had done it. I had a job. I was inching my way back to normalcy, even if it meant I had to claw and fight my way out. But my victory was short-lived, as I started the long walk home. What the hell was I supposed to say about all of this? With Action and Big Deal and the rest of the guys, it didn't really matter so much. I hardly saw them outside of the Jet conquests, and anyway they'd buy whatever story Riff sold them.

But there was the real issue. Riff. What was I supposed to say to him? He was like my brother, and I couldn't stand the thought that he probably never wanted to hear my name again after that. Besides, it was hardly like I could avoid him. There was the (at the moment, slightly inconvenient) fact that he slept on my couch every night.

Yeah. Most of the Jets didn't exactly understand that bit of our situation. They thought that Riff lived with me because he'd walked out on his parents at the mature old age of thirteen. He'd had enough of that life, and wanted to do what he wanted when he wanted. That's what he'd told them, anyway. I'd never seen the need to correct them. I would never tell them about the night I found my best friend sleeping on a bench in Central Park in the middle of January, covered in two inches of snow, shivering and coughing with pneumonia. I'd helped him stand up because he was so thin and sick he couldn't even do that on his own, and I took him home. How could my mom say no to letting a kid like that in the house? But I wouldn't tell the Jets that. Not if Riff himself couldn't find the words to tell them.

At last, I reached the cement steps of my apartment building and took the stairs up to the fifth floor. There were two doors at the top of the stairs, and I took the one on the left, stepping into my living room. The first thing that hit me was the fantastic smell of sausage or potatoes or something that I didn't know the name of that Mom was cooking in the kitchen. The second thing that hit me was my six-year-old sister Liesel.

"Tony!" she yelled, holding on to my legs like she was going to fly away in the wind without something to hold on to.

"Yeah," I said blandly. "That's me. What's…" I began, but she didn't give me time to finish.

"You came back! I told him you would, I told him!" she cried, grabbing me by the hand and pulling me into the kitchen.

I blinked a few times. "Of course I came back, Lise. Who said I…" Oh. The answer to the unfinished question hit me like a ton of bricks. Riff.

Sure enough, seated there at the kitchen table was my best friend of five years. He was resting his head in one hand as Mom paced up and down in front of the sink, peeling potatoes with a vengeance and gesturing at him with the knife as she talked. Under normal circumstances, one would consider this threatening, but Mom did it with love.

"Why you must be so difficult? All my children go, every day, and you see? They turn out fine," she said with a flick of the knife at Riff's chest. Despite the understandable anger I was feeling at Riff at the moment, I couldn't help but smile at this. Mom had broken out the old guns again. She'd been trying to get Riff to go back to school since the second week he'd been in our apartment, even though he'd dropped out in eighth grade and had absolutely no intention of returning.

"See, the thing is, though, that's not how it works for me, ma'am," he said patiently, though the way he was drumming his fingers against his forehead betrayed the fact that he was annoyed with the conversation. "Like I got nothing else to worry about that the square root of whatever and the capital of South America?"

I decided to point out that there couldn't really be a capital of South America, as it was, in fact, a continent.

"Hey!" Liesel said loudly, and both Mom and Riff pivoted to look at the two of us in the door. I groaned. Liesel was only six, the age where you've always got to be the center of attention, but I really wished she wouldn't do this to me right now. "See? What did I tell you?"

"Huh," Riff said, pointedly looking at Liesel and not me. "Well. What do you know? He's got his loyalties after all. Guess I was wrong, kid."

"What do you think you're doing, telling them lies like that?" I demanded, walking over to stand directly in front of him, daring him to look away from me now. "Who do you think you are? If you just knew what I'm trying to…"

"Oh, don't give me that shit, Tony, I don't need any more today," Riff said coldly as he shoved his chair back and stood up, as close to looking me in the eye as he was ever going to get when he was three inches taller than me. Mom nodded at Liesel, who fled the kitchen wide-eyed. Riff tried to tone down his Jet side when he came home, with a whole alternate vocabulary to replace his usual mess of swearing, but stopping him when he was this angry was like trying to stop the sun from rising, and she knew it. "That's all you ever gave me was a giant book of shit, wasn't it? That whole 'once a-"

He stopped abruptly, and I knew exactly what he was thinking. Mom. She still didn't quite know that Riff and I had been the leaders of the Jets. Hell, she still didn't know that we were in the Jets at all. That was just another item on the list of things I hadn't quite gotten around to telling her yet.

But Mom just nodded. "Once a Jet, always a Jet. I know. I not stupid, Ryan, and you not _that_ smart either. Go on," she said to Riff. I raised an eyebrow. Apparently there were less secrets around here than I thought. Mom's English might be a little shaky, but she was quick.

Riff reddened slightly, as he always did when my mom called him by his real name. Ryan West. No one else but my family knew it. He dropped it the second he left home, replacing it with his gang name. Riff. A catchy jazz hook, familiar and distinctive and impossible to get out of your head once you heard it. I can't believe he knew at the time how appropriate that would be. The other Jets had their fake names, too, (well, except me, and that was mostly because I couldn't come up with one) and he'd tried to tell Mom not to break protocol, but that never sat quite right with her. Rules and rituals never meant much to my mother if she didn't understand them; she'd do exactly what she wanted to, and never mind what other people thought.

But even the embarrassment wasn't enough to stop Riff when he wasn't finished. "All that stuff you told me, 'birth to earth, womb to tomb', we've always got each other's back, that was all a lie, is that it? All that stuff we came up with when we started the goddamn gang, you just blew it out your ass so you could duck out whenever you felt like it? Tony, man, I thought you were better than that. Guess that was just one more thing ol' Riff was wrong about? Going senile in his old age, maybe. Action was right about you, and I was an idiot not to listen. I trusted you. But I'm not gonna make that mistake again." And with a final, flaming glare at me, he started out the kitchen door.

"Not so fast," Mom said, grabbing Riff by the back of his tee-shirt and pulling him back. "I need talk to you for minute. Tony, you mind?"

The image of the street-tough gang leader caught by the arm by a middle-aged Polish woman with a half-peeled potato in the other hand ordinarily would have amused me, but at the moment the hatred I was feeling at my former best friend eclipsed that completely. How could he talk like that to me? Didn't he know what those kind of lies were doing to my family? I was the only man around this house left. They counted on me. And if he thought he could tear us apart just because of a stupid kid's war game, he had another thought about to be shoved in his face. Nonetheless, I stormed out of the kitchen, but the second I'd closed the door I put my ear up against it and waited. Whatever Mom was going to say to Riff, she could damn well say in front of me.

"Ryan, please, do not be so hard on my Tony," she was saying, her words a little hard to make out through the door. "It not his fault that he not like you."

I froze, my eyes widening. Was she… _hitting on him?_

Apparently, this had thrown Riff a little bit, too. "What?" he asked shakily.

Mom went on to explain. "He is not as set as you are. You know what you want with life. Jets, Sharks, gangs, you know what going on. Tony, he not like that. He not know. He want what you want, or he want what his family want? He want what his father want, before he die? What Tony want? He not sure. Tony, he confused." I felt another quick flash of anger fill me. Who did she think she was, telling Riff these kinds of things? I would talk to her when I was confused and alone and scared, and she couldn't even do me the favor not to spill my secrets to the one person who wouldn't understand? But then I remembered. She was my mom. She obviously knew what she was doing.

"So that gives him the right to blow me off like he doesn't even remember what we had? Sorry, ma'am, but I ain't buying that. We made a promise to each other. Ain't promises supposed to mean something still?" Riff demanded.

"And promise you make to mother about your sister? That mean something, too?" Mom shot right back. I heard a tiny gasp from Riff, then the sound of someone sitting down heavily in a chair. Apparently that punch had been way below the belt. I had no idea what she was talking about, and I'd known Riff for years, but obviously it meant something to him.

"Yes, promises, they mean something," Mom said gently, so quietly it was almost impossible for me to hear it. "But you can not keep every one all the time. Go. Is all right. Think what I said."

There was silence for a second, in which I wisely stepped away from the door, and then Riff stalked by me without even looking, his head down so I couldn't see his expression. He turned a corner down the hallway, still dead silent, and disappeared from sight. I stuck my head into the kitchen.

"What was that about?" I asked, stunned.

Mom didn't look up from the potatoes, as if they were the most interesting thing in the world rather than a slightly wet half-peeled root vegetable. "Ask him," she said coldly. "He know more than I do."

I threw up my hands in despair and stalked from the kitchen. You'd think that this problem hardly involved me at all, rather than having the friendship of the only guy I ever really cared about on the line. So much for families telling each other everything. I wasn't about to let this drop, though. One way or another, I was going to sort this out. I was going to get some answers.

It wasn't hard for me to guess where Riff had gone- just over four years of living with the guy had taught me something, at least. I crossed the apartment to the closet at the far side and walked in. Sure enough, the skylight was propped open, and there was a cardboard box positioned perfectly underneath, to give someone a leg up. I hopped up on the box and slipped through the gap onto the roof of the building.

Riff was sitting there, staring off across the grey roofs of the Manhattan panorama. The sun was coloring the metal fire escapes and streetlights gold and copper, reflecting off of them and making them glow like precious jewels. It would have been beautiful, if I'd been paying it any attention. Instead, I was drawn to Riff's eyes, the same way I'd been the first time I'd met him in a corner liquor store five years ago, trying to sweet-talk his way into a free pack of cigarettes. There was a look there that I'd never seen before as he looked at a middle-aged married couple on the fire escape of the building across the street who were also watching the sunset. I'd seen him serious before, but I'd never seen him brooding.

Riff looked up from his thoughts, catching sight of me sitting next to him, and he gave a humorless laugh. "I can't escape you anywhere, can I?" he asked.

"I know you too well, that's all," I said, but after a second I added, "No, actually, that's the problem. I thought I knew you, but there keep being things that I don't understand. What's this about a sister?"

Riff refused to look at me. His eyes snapped back to Mr. and Mrs. Suarez on the fire escape, who had just begun to kiss. "Didn't your mother ever tell you not to listen at doors?" he asked in that same grim humor.

"Didn't your mom ever teach you not to keep secrets?" I asked, though the second the words were out of my mouth I regretted them. Who knew what Riff's mom had taught him. He never talked about her. I didn't even know if she was still alive. From the tiny way Riff's shoulders shifted, I could tell we were on the same train of thought. "Oh, come on, man, I thought we didn't hide anything from each other," I tried again.

Apparently that was the wrong thing to say. Riff finally met my eyes, and they were absolutely flaming. It terrified me. "Yeah? See, funny thing is, that's what I thought, too. Thought we told each other everything. Thought if you'd found something better in this fucked-up world than the Jets, better than us, better than me, and you were moving on, you'd at least tell me. Looks like we were both wrong," he snapped, challenging me to say something back.

"Riff, it's not like that!" I groaned, and pushed my hair back out of my face as I stalled for time to try and verbalize what I was thinking.

"Then what is it like?" he asked.

"I don't know, like…" I started, then decided just to start talking and hoping I hit close to what I wanted to say. "Like, did you ever think that there might be something else out there, besides what we're doing now? Besides trying to fight for something we can't keep, besides trying to keep on top when Schrank and Krupke keep trying to drag you back down? Like there's, I don't know, something more to life than that?" I finished. It wasn't quite what I was trying to say, but it wasn't that far off. I hadn't managed to catch the undertone of hope I'd felt when I walked away from the Jets and got a job, like I wasn't worthless, that for once I was doing the right thing. Like the way the nightmares had stopped about a week ago, replaced with this feeling that instead of horrible, dangerous things, something good might finally be coming.

"Oh, yeah, and don't think I haven't looked, but I'm as close as a guy like me's ever gonna get. What, you think you got something better?" Riff asked, but I could tell he was backing down a little bit.

"Well, no, not yet, but I've got this feeling," I started kind of lamely, "that it's coming, and if I just wait for it, it'll, you know, it'll find me?"

"Yeah, like something better's just gonna fall out of the sky?" Riff shook his head and laughed quietly to himself. "Fall right outta the motherfucking sky. Some people are born lucky, I guess. You catch a flying pot of gold walking to work. And then you get people that get nailed in the head with it, and there's not even anything in it because some yuppie with two kids and a picket fence stole the gold."

I stared at him, and was almost going to laugh when I realized he was serious. "You… you're not talking about you, man, are you? You're kidding, right? You've got ten guys that think you're the greatest thing to walk the earth since Jesus, the hottest girlfriend I could even dream of, enough power to crush anyone who looks at you funny, and no curfew, no one to tell you what you can or can't do, no one to worry about but yourself. Do you know how many guys would kill to have what you have?" Me among them. Sometimes all I wanted was someone to look up to me, to think they wanted to be like me, just a little reassurance that I was doing the right thing, that was all. It sure sounded to me that if Riff wasn't happy with freedom and authority and corporeal worship, then fine, we could trade.

But Riff gave another bitter laugh in disagreement. "Yeah? And what've I got? Nothing, compared to you. You got a house, I got your couch. You got enough money to head on out to Princeton in a year or two, I have to steal cigarettes, and I can hardly write anyways. People listen to you, Tony, they respect you, and most of they guys would die for you, and you don't even have to try. I've worked for five years to get half as far as you did, and damn if it doesn't feel every day of my life that I'm losing 'em. You live with a family that cares about you, a sweet old lady like your ma and an adorable little chick like your sister, even if she is a little nuts. And what've I got for a family? My fucking son-of-a-bitch uncle. If he even counts."

He sounded so cynical that I tried to change the subject. "Apparently, man, that's not quite true. What's this about a mysterious sister I've never heard of, then?"

Again, Riff refused to look at me. "She's dead, man. Five years ago now."

Five years. Five years ago this January Riff had run away from his uncle. Coincidence? Somehow I doubted it. I didn't say anything. After all, what exactly could you say to that? "She was all I had," Riff went on in a half-strangled voice. "Her, and later you, Tony. I already lost Em. I don't think I can go through that again. Don't make me do that again."

I was taken a little aback by this. Riff, the guy I'd thought to be the emotional rock of the Jets, the constant voice of wisdom and reason, apparently had a wider emotional range than I'd thought. He wasn't just the leader, the general, the almost God-like figure the guys made him out to be. He was human, just like the rest of us. Just like me.

I turned to face him, a half-smile on my face. "Riff, you're not losing me, you got that? I'll still be here, won't I? You'll still live here, won't you? We've been best friends for five years now. You're not getting rid of me that easy. You're always gonna be with me, Riff, because I need you. I don't think I can go on like I'm going now without you. And I guess I'm not the only one thinking that way. I'm not going anywhere."

Riff looked at me. I looked at Riff. At exactly the same moment, we both burst out laughing uncontrollably, like we were high on something stronger than life and friendship. "Well, damn if that wasn't the most heartwarming thing I've ever heard," Riff said, grinning. "You ever think about writing Hallmark cards, Tony?" But the message had sunk in, somewhere behind the melodrama and the mocking smile on his face, and we both knew it. Enough of the man behind the mask had been shown for today, and the Riff I knew, the one that was always in control, was back. But I wouldn't forget what I'd seen.

"Come on back, Riff. You scared the shit out of Liesel, you want to tell her that I'm not going to walk out on her and you're not trying to kill me?" I asked him wryly, propping the skylight back open.

Riff grimaced. "I'm sorry about that, you know? I was just so mad… But…"

"Oh, relax, man, or I'm breaking out another fucking edition of _Chicken Soup for the Soul_," I snapped. "You know I can't control what comes out of my mouth when you talk like that."

Riff laughed and slipped back into the hall closet, his skinny body vanishing from my sight. I hesitated there a moment, looking at Mr. and Mrs. Suarez. The goal had been to give Riff something to think about, but I'd gotten some food for thought, too. Before, I'd always thought that luck was something you were born with. Some people have it, and other people don't. That was just the way it was. But my talk with my best friend had made me think again. Before, I'd never have thought of the Suarezes as lucky, but there was something they had, that blissful thoughtless happiness, that neither Riff or I could say we'd ever experienced.

We'd always had set roles before. Riff was the successful leader, and I was the blind follower, second place. But maybe that depended on your viewpoint. You could never tell who was lucky until you put it to the test.

And maybe there was another kind of luck, a kind of luck that neither of us knew anything about. But I was on a new road now, and even though I could never explain why, I had a feeling that somewhere, around one bend or another, something was coming that might change that. With one last look across the sunset-painted West Side landscape, I dropped back through the skylight and left all of my pondering, impossible to explain fantasies and hopes there in the colors and golden light.

Only not really.

* * *

_Okay, just so you know, I'm not looking at an update in the real near future. The next chapter is huge, and the chapter after that is only about a third finished, and since the time it takes me to type one chapter is about equal to the time it takes for one of the icebergs in Antarctica to break off into the ocean and startle the living daylights out of Al Gore, we're looking at a short break and a word from our sponsers. _

_Still! That is no reason not to leave a review! Or an opus, if I'm lucky... : )_

_How many nice people will be amazing and review? Why am I typing in italics? How many licks does it seriously take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? The world may never know..._

_-RebelFaerie-_


	4. Doc: Like There's A War On

Okay, I know it's been like four years or whatever since I've updated this. I know, I know, I know. Don't ostracize me. My mind works in strange ways. Random bursts of inspiration are followed by giant periods of super-busy school life, other projects, and incomparable laziness. I really haven't forgotten about this, and I know that updating every few years isn't exactly the best way to go at it, but what can I say? That's just kind of what's happening. Well, anyway, I'm not going to stall any longer. Here you go. I'm getting out of the way. I'm not exactly endearing myself to anyone here anyway... :)

* * *

**Four:**

**Doc:**

**Like There's A War On**

"_Penny for your thoughts but a dollar for your insights_

_or a fortune for your disaster_

_I'm just a painter and I'm drawing a blank_

_They say quitters never win_

_but we walked the plank on a sinking ship_

_there's a world outside of my front door_

_that gets off being dead…"_

_Fall Out Boy, Don't You Know Who I Think I Am?_

I must be going soft in my old age, you know? Sure, sure, fifty-two ain't that old. I could still give the best of these gun-swingin' kids a run for their money like back in the good ol' days, if I felt like it, don't think I couldn't. I can still bench-press two fifty… Well, okay, fine, two fifty grams. Or marshmallows. But you get the point, don't you? I ain't reserving my bed in no goddamn nursing home anytime soon, I ain't no dying senile old man and anyone with half a brain could figure that out. I can run this little store here with my eyes closed.

So why the hell did I go and hire Tony? It was just asking for trouble. Not that Tony hisself is trouble, exactly. On the contrary, he's the nicest kid you're gonna find around this shithole of a neighborhood. Much as he tries to tell me that this ain't the case, though, he couldn't change who he was. A tiger don't change his stripes. A republican don't ever change his voting habits. A Jet don't ever change the way he walks, the way he talks, the way he fights. Sure, he stopped going to the fights Riff and Company were setting up, and when talk turned to Bernardo and his Sharks he'd pointedly pull out a cigarette and pretend he wasn't listening, but the Jets were closer to each other than a giant family of eleven brothers (plus or minus one sister, because Anybodys either counted or didn't depending on the day), and no moral epiphany was gonna change that.

Now that Tony was the one hanging around the store six or seven hours a day, I knew sure as sin that the Jets would follow. That in mind, I'd laid down the law to the boys the first day Tony was working here. You see anyone walk past that's older than you or richer than you or more civilized than you (which pretty much made that condition all-inclusive), you shut up and sit down and act like you're a normal kid for once in your life. They'd held to it for the most part, except when "anyone" meant Krupke or Schrank, but hey! You can't blame them for that.

Key words in that part, though, being "the most part". When they were alone, those Jets, they scared even me, and I'd been through war. It takes a whole lot to scare this cat. Maybe it's got something to do with the way when you're in a war, you expect danger. It comes with the job description. They told you that every innocent-looking child could have a bomb strapped to his back, so you're always ready for it. Not prepared, you couldn't be, but you're ready. But with these Jets, nobody was gonna tell you who was a threat and who was just a kid who talked big. What were games and what was for real? It was almost easier for me to take when everything was real. At least then there was some kind of sense to the nonsense. Am I making sense? What a question.

Anyway, I've seen armies, and the Jets were pretty quickly developing into something close to one. I'd have Riff pegged as commander-in-chief in a heartbeat; his boys would do anything he told them to do without a pause. I was honest-to-God convinced that one of them would wind up killing somebody at a word dropped by their leader. I could just see it splashed across the headlines now. Thank the Lord Tony wasn't like that. I already had twelve psycho crazies running around the store. I couldn't handle thirteen.

Most of the time, when the Jets turned up, it was strictly business, you know? Sharks this and Sharks that and strategy here and specifics there and Jesus Christ only knows what kind of plans they came up with at that back table. I sure didn't have a clue: I was keeping a low profile. The worst the fuzz could come up to nail me for was going to be being an enabler, because even if they had somehow decided to use my joint as an HQ, I sure wasn't going to have anything more to do with it. You can't arrest me for something I don't know. Anyway, that's how it ran most of the time, but every so often they'd call it a holiday and show up just for shits and giggles (or possibly the pleasure of my conversation, but since I avoided talking to most of them on principle I was doubting this was the case), and just to make it an even more special occasion sometimes they would bring their girls along.

If you ever want to see the weird hierarchy of a gang in action, take a look at their girlfriends. I know it sounds chauvinistic, and probably it is, but in the case of these girls it was true: power and status was just as important to them as a pretty face and an easy smile. It was sick, but they went straight for the top and let Riff take his pick of them, working their way on down as far as their numbers let them. Poor Baby John, that's all I'm saying. Unless he decided to stage a coup d'etat, he wasn't getting much action in the next few years.

Given that he'd had the pick of the crop, I couldn't help wondering every time I saw them together why exactly Riff and Graziella had ended up together. It was, to say the least, confusing. Graziella, to describe her in the least amount of words, was hot enough to make me wish I was thirty-five years younger and (sorry, mom, but I mean it) such a bitch most of the time she made me glad I wasn't. I don't know what Captain Jet saw in her, besides the obvious movie-star hair and face and body that was giving normal girls a complex all through the city, but she had him wrapped around her finger like I wouldn't believe possible for someone as headstrong and independent as Riff was. He wouldn't stand putting up with anyone's crap for more than thirty seconds without telling them to hit the highway, and yet the two of them'd been together for over a year now and showed no more sign of falling to pieces than they ever had. Not that that was saying much; she had a fiery temper, that one did, and so did he, and when you mix fire with fire what do you get? An explosion and some singed eyebrows. They fought more than the two Koreas, that pair. I'd see them out on the sidewalk after the meetings broke up and they'd be screaming, she'd swear, he'd swear worse, she'd even hit him more than once, but no matter how bad it got or what she did he'd never hit her. Ol' Riff knew already what happens when a man hits a girl. So did his parents. Much shit as I can pull up on Schrank and Krupke's favorite gang leader, much stuff as he does that gives me nightmares when I think about it, at least I can say this much for him: he's got his head on right. He learns from mistakes. And that's a big something in this world.

As far as the Jets went, that might be the most television-worthy coupling we had going on, but it was certainly not the only one. Where there are boys getting apprehended by cops, there will be girls that want a piece of the excitement. That's not a stereotype, that's life. Action had a girl named Velma, and they were for sure a different story. They don't look like a New England prep school couple, but they do their best to act like it. He'll cool the Tough Guy routine right off when she comes around and morphs into the perfect little gentleman. He'll hold doors open for her, all that ridiculous romantic stuff. It's sweet. Completely disgusting, yeah, makes me want to hurl, but it's sweet. The other guys near the top of the Jet pyramid, round the general region of the dairy and proteins (about 3 servings a day) if you're following my train of thought here, managed to do all right for themselves. Diesel and his Minnie, both of them as cool and easy to talk to as you could want. Pauline and A-Rab, as much fun to observe from afar as a stand-up comedy routine, given her deadpan sarcasm and his inability to say anything that wasn't completely ridiculous. Clarice and Tiger, both up there on their little mountain of superiority, taking time from sneering down their noses at the rest of humanity only to make irritated comments and fuck.

Ah, Jesus, would you listen to me? I sound like a Sociology professor. I don't have time to give a dissertation on modern society, I got a store to run. Well, I guess I would, normally. I'm looking at the clock, and it's telling me it's only 3:00. My least favorite time of day. It's too late for the early customers and too early for the all-nighters and the clan of Manhattan's finest that I mentioned earlier to show up. So, once Tony and I cleaned the whole store top to bottom like we do every day to satisfy my OCD, what's there to do? Never ask Tony that question, I'm learning. He'll think of something. Today, his brilliant plan was to go paint that sign on the front wall I've been musing about since the beginning of time.

"Tony…" I'd groaned, trying to make him understand, "you can't paint a sign just because you feel like it!"

"Well, why not?" he'd asked, the idiot. "Ya don't think I'm good enough to do it right, is that it?"

"Listen, kid, you know just as much about running this here store as I did when I was your age," I began.

"And you knew everything when you were my age…" Tony'd said knowingly.

Hey, I'm as susceptible to flattery as the next guy. "Well, yeah," I'd agreed modestly.

"So what's the problem?" he'd argued.

"Well, first off, there's the legal issues. Some people would classify that kind of thing as graffiti. Two certain people in particular, I know you're well-acquainted with them. Second, have you looked at your handwriting recently?"

"…If I said yes, what would you say, Doc?" he'd asked sheepishly, clearly following where my train of thought was headed.

"I'd say you need to have your head shrunk after all. You think anyone can read that, you're crazy. It looks like a third-grader with a broken hand, Tony. If you're gonna write a sign, it's gotta look amazing, kid!" I'd groaned. "It's gotta attract attention, and not in a bad way either!" This was Tony on one of his bad days- slower than a snail running a marathon through molasses.

"Well, then I'll make it amazing! It's gonna attract the right kind of attention, Doc, or don't you trust me?" he'd asked, and I'd sensed then that it was time to give up. Damn useful, Tony is, but as stubborn as a mule in a mud hole when he puts his mind to it. He's out there now, standing on top of that old ladder I'd found in the back room under that quilt my grandma gave me forty years ago (Tony'll never let me live that one down…), painting away. You could never pay me to admit it, but it did look like skywriting. I was almost impressed. Almost. You could only drum up so much business with a sign reading "Doc's Drugst". But hey! Beggars can't be choosers.

I'm going through the money in the register and counting it at the moment. Not that I didn't trust Tony, but you get all sorts round here. And I'm not just talking about the Jets and their war councils, or the Sharks doing whatever the hell they did when they stopped by. I wouldn't trust Krupke or Schrank as far as I could throw them, and I doubt I could even lift the old fat-ass. But I'm off subject again.

Speaking of getting all sorts, Tony wasn't exactly alone anymore. Good ol' Riff was out there with him, leaning against the ladder and giving Tony the old what-for. I had half a mind to tell him the ladder was about to collapse if he kept doing that, but decided against it. He'd figer that out on his own.

"Tony! You're not even listening to me!" I head Riff groan.

"I hear you loud and clear, man," Tony replied.

"Well, then why not? You can't say no to me without at least telling me why not!" Riff snapped. He'd clearly had enough, though of what exactly remained to be seen.

"Fine. Why not," Tony muttered, painting the "o" with his tongue between his teeth in concentration. I grinned. Thank you, Mr. Sarcastic, for being sufficiently ridiculous.

"Cause it's me that's askin' you, Tony!" Riff said in something resembling desperation. "I wouldn't ask you if I didn't really need it, but I don't have nobody but you to go to. We need you on our side for this, man, or we're going to get our asses handed to us one by one, and you don't want that! Come to the dance tonight." I laughed to myself as I shuffled fives. I remember the day that Tony'd do anything Riff told him to. He'd throw himself under a taxi without a second thought. Riff asked him to jump, Tony'd ask how high. But now…? We'll see if he was lying after all when he told me he'd changed.

"Listen, Riff, I ain't coming, okay? There it is, straight up. I promised Doc I'd finish this sign tonight, and it's not going to do itself, you know? I've got a job, and I'm getting my own life, and I'm trying to take life seriously for once, all right?"

"Tony!" Riff groaned, throwing up his hands. "This is bigger than some dumbass sign! This is important! Them Sharks are multiplying! They're like goddamn rabbits or something, and they fight as big as they talk. If we don't stop 'em now, we'll never…"

"Work for a living? Do something useful? Do anything besides fight and plot and risk dying?" Tony interrupted. I shook my head, feeling a small wave of self-righteousness pop up. I'd used those exact same words in one of my trademarked rants to Tony last night, which had ranged through everything from the morals of the Jets to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Turns out I'll have to be careful what I say around him, now that apparently he actually listens to those monologues… "You think this fight is special, Riff?" Tony went on. "Yeah, sure. Everything's special, if you could just open your eyes far enough to see it. You, me, the sweet old guy I work for…" Aww, would you listen to that? That's so sweet, I think I'm tearing up. Though I don't think the old part was really necessary… "I ain't one of you anymore, and that's all there is to it. Those days are over."

"When you're a Jet, you stay a Jet, buddy-boy!" Riff went on doggedly. "Come on! I know you're not gonna strategize anymore, I know that! I know you don't want to fight, and I'm not making you! But I'm telling you, I can't do this on my own. If you're not there, the guys aren't gonna take me seriously. If they think that you think it's not worth your time, then no matter what I tell 'em it ain't worth shit. Please, man, I don't ever ask you for anything, but here I am, askin'. Do this for me."

"Oh, yeah, sure, you don't ask for anything," Tony snorted. "And I guess my mom just opened the door to my living room and begged you to come in and stay with us." I don't know, from an outsider's point that seemed like a low blow, but I guess they were at the level where you could joke about things like your best friend sleeping on your couch for four years.

"Well, you don't know that for sure, man. She's had the hots for me forever," Riff said aloud thoughtfully. I couldn't help it- I laughed out loud as Tony snarled and pounced off the ladder. In a second, Riff was pinned to the ground, his left arm twisted up behind his back. Now these were the kind of moments that people would pay good money to see. God, I love this job. It's got unbelievable perks.

"All right, all right, I take it back! Get off me, you sonofabitch!" Riff yelped. Tony, seemingly happy with that, straightened up and straightened his tee-shirt on his shoulders. Riff gingerly got back to his feet and brushed the dirt from his jeans. "Happy now?" he snapped.

"Weirdly, kinda," Tony shrugged, going back to his forsaken letter O.

"Well, that makes one of us. C'mon, Tony, stop being such a prick. I thought we were friends. I thought you were better than this. I already told the guys you'd be there. You're not gonna make me a liar in front of our guys, are you?" Riff wheedled in the teenage equivelant of the Sad Puppy Dog whine, complete with wide innocent eyes to complete the guilt trip to end all guilt trips. I snorted loudly. You ever find a less innocent kid in this state, let me know. He deserves a medal.

"…What time?" Tony asked finally, with a trace of guilt. I tell you, I could have ran right out there and strangled him if my store wasn't disturbingly close to the police station. I groaned and buried my face in my hands. Tony, man, what the hell do you think you're doing? I thought you'd told me you changed. Whatever happened to the whole It's Not My Fight Anymore, Doc, all those lovely words? I thought you were better than this. Way to make yourself a liar. I stopped myself mid-mental-chastise and chuckled ruefully. Who'd've thought I'd be resorting to the exact same type of guilt tripping as that street trash outside? These times were more confusing than I'd thought. Next thing you knew, I'd wind up skipping around in a pink fairy princess tutu, claiming to be Queen of Manhattan. Some days, you just don't know what the hell's going on.

"Ten o'clock?" Riff asked, as though he couldn't believe his luck. I was getting well acquainted with the feeling myself.

"Ten o'clock it is, and I hope I'll live to regret this," Tony sighed, as Riff slapped him on the back in thanks and all but pranced merrily out into the street. You and me both, Tony, I thought to myself. You and me both.

About a half an hour later, a paint-splattered Tony returned the ladder to my back room, trying without much success to pretend that nothing had happened. After a few minutes of awkward silence, during which I glared at the kid in a way that would've made Winston Churchill pack his bags and run for the hills, he coughed and glanced at the clock to break the quiet.

"Sorry, doc, but I think I'm gonna have to duck out kinda early tonight," he said awkwardly, shifting his weight from foot to foot. "Something kinda came up…"

I snorted. "Yeah, Tony-boy, I know what kinda came up. Looks like the Jets ain't the only ones you were lyin' to, huh?" He opened his mouth to give some explanation, but I decided I just wasn't in the mood for it anymore. "Save your breath, kid, and just go. But come back here tomorrow morning, yeah? We got some things to talk about."

Tony sighed and ran his hand through his hair, obviously uncomfortable. It's about time that kid started feeling some guilt for all this. "Listen, doc, I'm sorry, but…"

"I don't care. Just go," I snapped, slamming my hand against the counter with maybe a little more anger than I'd really planned. That did it. Tony was gone like a spooked buck in hunting season. Good riddance. I'll take a lot of things. I'll be a doormat, I'll do whatever they ask of me, I'll turn a blind eye to all of this, but I won't be lied to. A man's only as good as his word. How good was Tony, anyway? I guess that remained to be seen.

Not more than a minute later, the door opened again and ten men, accompanied by six girls, came into the store. They jabbered away constantly in what I could only assume was Spanish. They took the back table the Jets usually claimed, and even though it was anything but funny I smiled a little. Sharks. Not that different after all, if they'd known it. One place, two separate groups of people, a shockingly similar scene. As the group of sixteen settled themselves in among conversation I couldn't catch a word of, I idly wondered what Riff and Company would have to say if they found themselves surrounded by all this. It would be instructive, that's for sure.

"Hey, Toro, mia amigo, what were you doing last night, did you say?" one of them laughed, sitting down and kicking his feet up on the table.

"What was I doing? Pepe, you are an idiot that I am ashamed to be in contact with. That is how one says 'hello' in America, are you really that dense?" this Toro, a skinny, dark-haired kid of about seventeen said dryly, rolling his eyes.

"Mm, and I'll just tell that to Marguerita, shall I? That you were just saying 'hello' to the nice lady down at the club? I find it hard to believe that you could get that many words out around her mouth, do you not?" Pepe asked, throwing back his head and laughing at the imagined scene.

"You were doing what now?" the stick-thin girl who I could only guess to be Marguerita asked, shoving Toro in the shoulder with irritation. It was absolutely obvious that they were together; there just wasn't any other way that they could have had that much friction between them and not have been punching the other's face in as I watched.

"Nothing at all, my lady, my sweet, my gentle water lily…" Toro added hastily, giving Marguerita an affectionate kiss on the cheek. I grinned to myself. Yep, definitely together. The old man's still got it.

"Si, well, this water lily has accepted answers like that one too many times. Later, Don Juan, we will have to have a talk, will we not?" Marguerita asked playfully, grinning to show that even though her voice was joking, she really meant it.

"Yes, dear…" Toro sighed. "Thank you so much, Pepe, for reminding everyone of that," he growled.

"Any time," Pepe replied easily. "No need to thank me. You do not need to get in my good books, anyway. When my name goes up in lights in Times Square, you are already a footnote in my acceptance speech, Toro."

"Would that not require you accepting something?" Toro asked, rolling his eyes. "What is it for this time, Brilliant Prodigy? Sculpting? Science? World peace and discovering a cure for smallpox?"

"Hardly," Pepe replied loftily; here was a cat who thought he had the whole thing figured out already, I could see that from across the store. "I am writing a record now that will change the music industry and quite possibly bring about world peace, now you mention it. And they have already developed a cure for smallpox. You do know that, right?"

"Not in Puerto Rico they haven't," Toro commented, earning himself a round of laughs from the rest of the Sharks.

Eyeing the group with some curiosity, I was starting to wonder if these were the same gun-swinging war-crazed Sharks Riff preached eternal damnation to every time he showed up on my property. They were just… just kids. They weren't demons, there was nothing about them that was any different than the Jets, as far as I could see, beyond the color of their skin and their accents. Someone else had to have seen this; I couldn't be the only one. As my thoughts took this direction, I ended up distracting myself by wondering if there's something like non-eternal damnation, but as that ain't got much to do with the Sharks it's neither here or there.

"Where is Anita? How come she never shows up when I am around, do you think?" another Shark was saying as I returned myself to the conversation. He was absolutely dripping dramatic flair; something in the way he held himself, the way he said every word, I was just wondering what was going on in his head as I shamelessly eavesdropped.

A real young kid, maybe fifteen, threw back his head and laughed at this. It was such an innocent laugh it brought unbidden to mind images of cotton candy and fields of dasies and a spring afternoon in a hammock as the ice cream truck rolled on by. (Don't blame me for all that, either. Blame my subconscious association. It ain't got nothing to do with me, I promise you that) "Anxious, he never brings Anita because you're around," he laughed.

"Luis, m'boy, do not attempt to school me in the gentle dance of love," Anxious, the drama queen, said to the kid, his voice dripping melodrama all over the freshly waxed floor. "I have taken turns around the ballroom of emotions since before you can remember. Just because I made one drastic misstep does not mean I am doomed to be a spectator forever?"

"A Consuelo-shaped drastic misstep?" Luis asked with a knowing smile.

"Child, you do not know how right you are," Anxious sighed. A girl I took to be Consuelo, who put the back end of a bus at pretty decent odds of winning the Miss America pageant in comparison, gave a snarl like a cornered jackal and seized a decent-sized handbag from one of the girls and set about beating Anxious' brains out with it.

"Excuse me? Did I hear right, Senor? You do not know how lucky you are to have me!" she cried, without a break in the unpremeditated assault.

"You are absolutely right, my dear," Anxious said smoothly, jumping up and seeking shelter behind another table. "I haven't a clue."

Consuelo groaned and pitched the bag at Anxious like a grenade, who ducked and missed decapitation by accessory by about half an inch.

"Hey, watch it!" the girl in the miniskirt that Consuelo had robbed piped up, hands on her hips. Thank God none of the PRs were paying any mind my way, or otherwise her boyfriend would've been on me in about a second. Damn, but that girl was something! And her serious thing for leather wasn't doing her much harm, either. But I wasn't raised to be no pervert. I'm just stating a fact, then getting on with my business. I swear. "Give me that, genius!" she pouted at Anxious, who put on a mock-sulk.

"Ah, come on, Teresita, it matches his outfit so well," Toro teased. Anxious rolled his eyes and flung the purse back to Teresita. "What do you keep in there, chica?" Toro gasped as the bag nearly punched a hole in my new formica tabletop. I cringed. Those things hadn't been cheap, y'know.

"I do not think that is any of your business, boy," another Shark snarled. If I hadn't been trying my damndedst to keep unnoticed, I would've grabbed the cashbox and fled for the back room, not coming out for three weeks. Six-five, two-hundred-fifty pounds, black eyes like a rattler, tough-guy leather jacket, easily the meanest-looking guy I've seen since the war and Jesus knows I don't like to dwell on that. "Just leave her alone, kid. You and your preschool whore go and play kickball, but stay away from my girl, comprende?"

Toro's eyes were spitting fire as he shoved back his chair, Marguerita at his side in a second. It was funny, almost; the kid was as scrawny and lanky as the other guy was massive, and his girl probably tipped the scales at a hundred pounds after a Thanksgiving dinner, but somehow I honestly believed they could take him. I dunno, I've always pulled for the underdogs.

"Say one more word, I dare you," Marguerita snarled, gripping Toro's shoulder to prevent him from jumping the table.

"What are you going to do?" the Shark laughed.

"Moose, please, no, it is nothing, I do not care," Teresita began quickly, pawing his leather-clothed shoulder, but Moose (appropriate, for being built like one…) was still glaring daggers at Toro.

"Hey, hey, hey, Sharks! Do you think this is what I called out meeting for? Your jealous cat-fighting? No. We have work to be done," the oldest-looking one there, greasy-haired and dressed all in black, good-looking in a dangerous kind of way I guess, yelled, and instantly all other talk stopped. Toro, Marguerita, and Moose sat down grudgingly, the tension between them still crackling like a downed power line. My eyes were drawn back to the spawn of Zorro, that complete confidence he was lounging with, that cocky assurance. At last. The great Bernardo. I noticed straight off his eerie resemblance to that air Riff always walked with, the feeling of being on top, of constant alertness for malcontent, for conspiracy, for anything and everything that could bring him down. It was the look of power and knowing how to handle it. If he'd given me an order, I probably would have saluted and hopped to.

"Thank you," he said coldly to the silence. "To business. Meaning, the Jets. They must be taken down several notches. Every notch, if possible. And soon."

"They cannot continue walking our streets like the color of their skin gives them some right to them!" a tough-looking shark, all muscles and strong jaw and broad shoulders, was now ranting. "It is up to Puerto Rico to put them back in their place, their working-class, high-school dropout, street rat place! Not only are they not better than us, they are not better than anything, not even the streets they try to claim as their own!"

The girl next to him let out a high-pitched giggle, possibly the stupidest noise I've ever heard out of a human being. "Dios mia, Indio, but you are brilliant!" she chirped. "If I could speak as wonderfully as you do…" I contemplated slamming the cashbox against my head until I passed out; she was one person I just couldn't handle, not even in small doses. Two sentances and that much I knew. It was disgusting.

"You only speak the truth, Rosalia," Indio the Pompous said to her, beaming and obviously intending to rant for the next seventeen years.

"Indio! I have this under control. Thank you," Bernardo said coldly. Indio shrank down in his chair, mortified to have incurred the wrath of the great Bernardo, but almost immediately became distracted with exploring the inside of Rosalia's mouth. I had to hide a spontaneous gag reflex. That sort of thing should be illegal.

"They're assembling at the dance at the gym tonight. And we will be there. Won't we? Juano?" he asked, cornering a squirrely-looking boy of about sixteen, who was about thirty seconds away from having an embarrassing accident all over my health-department-sanctioned chairs. (Not to be so for much longer, I suspected…)

"W-well, I, I don't, I m-mean, we could…" he stammered, petrified.

"Oh, for God's sake, Juano, have an opinion for once!" Anxious groaned, his voice with exasperation. "It will not kill you, you know…"

"He might be right," a Shark who up till now had been sitting in the corner silently said quietly, popping up unexpectedly to come to the nervous Juano's defense.

"How can he be right?" Pepe asked, stunned. "Nibbles, you do realize what he said was as noncommittal as you can be without being dead."

"It is a hard decision," Nibbles said reasonably, in a mellow baritone of a voice. "We are new here. We do not want to take any unnecessary risks because there is no one to back us up."

"Chino? What do you think?" Bernardo asked. No response. "Chino? Oh, for God's sake, Chino!"

The Shark Chino literally fell out of his chair, startled out of his intense conversation with a very pretty girl.

Bernardo rolled his eyes. "Estella, please, we are trying to have a meeting here. Is there any way you could not distract my second-in-command with your entrancing conversation?"

"Sorry," she said lightly, sharing a conspiratorial wink with Chino.

"So it is settled. We are going to the dance," Bernardo said with finality, and the conversation spiraled off into tactics and strategies and everything else.

I stopped listening and started wiping off the front counter, more than a little unnerved by what I'd just experienced. The Sharks were so… so normal. I could just imagine Riff and Bernardo arguing over politics and communism and the war at the infamous back table, while Pepe, Toro, and A-Rab plotted Schrank's demise and Snowboy, Anxious, and Marguita pelted passersby with French fries. Rosalia and Velma could compare makeup notes for hours having a giggly old time, Luis and Baby John could read Spiderman comics by the jukebox, Chino and Tony could discuss the stupidity of everyone around them together rather than alone for a change, and Moose… well, he'd always be an odd bird, no question there. But instead, the Jets and the Sharks met at the same store, at the same table, talked the same way, joked the same way, and plotted to kill each other.

Why couldn't they see what I saw, what Schrank saw, what Tony saw for about a day? Couldn't they see that their fighting was making everything ten times worse, not making it better? Why couldn't they give peace a chance? Why did they have to live like there's a war on?

* * *

Cheers! There we are, anyway. I'm hoping for updates hopefully less than four years apart, but again you never can tell these days... Even though I'm ridiculous, I'm still holding out some hope here, so I'll toss out this suggestion: review! They still fill me with warm fuzzies, all this time later.

Love to all my readers who haven't given up on me,

-RebelFaerie-


	5. Schrank: The Age of Reason

**Disclaimer: **Nope, still nothing. All this time later, still nothing.

**A/N: **So this is the way to get me to update, huh? Have somebody come along and review every chapter individually, essentially making me feel super-guilty for letting all this time go before I posted another chapter? Hey, whatever works... Sorry this one's a little shorter and less... well, just less everything in general than usual. I'm not sure it's up to scratch, but I needed to cover this scene and I freaking love writing from Schrank's point of view... It's like pretending to be the crazy old man that lives across the street from you. It's amusing. That said, all opinions and racist comments made in the following chapter are not my views. I'm saying them in a sarcastic, "do you realize how you sound?" way, and I'm not trying to offend anybody.

Haha, I've never had to disclaim myself like that before. I feel like I'm the opening DVD credits... "The views and opinions expressed therein do not reflect the views and opinions of FOX Industries or its affiliates..." I wish I had affiliates...

Anyway, I'm rambling again. Let's do this thing.

* * *

**Five:**

**Schrank:**

** The Age of Reason**

_"If no one moves, then nobody's gonna get hurt_

_Don't move, cause nobody wants to get hurt..._

_You pray for proof, I'm probably making this up_

_It's true, I'm probably making this up..."_

We Are Scientists, Nobody Move Nobody Get Hurt

_"Come on, live it up while you can_

_We all lose in the end_

_No you don't get another shot,_

_Bang bang, shoot 'em up, yeah..."_

Cobra Starship, The City Is At War

August 23, 1950. 8:10 PM

You ever wonder what it's like being the only one in a five-hundred mile radius that has any idea what he's doing? Well, lemme tell you, if you're interested. For a little while, it's kinda funny. You get to watch all the other poor sons of bitches screw up and then tell them how to fix it, and you can't help feeling a little superior. After a while, though, the shit starts to hit the fan. People rely on you. You end up having to _do_ shit for them, and I don't even have to tell you how annoying that can be. Speaking as the only person in the entire Manhattan Police Department who has the tiniest half of an idea what he's doing (my own excellent partner included), it's exhausting having to do everyone else's job, plus your own. You'd think somebody else would care what the world's coming to these days, at least just a little. Or they could fake it, just to make me feel better.

Apparently my favorite groups of kids, the Jets and some PR greenhorn club of misfits calling themselves the Spots or the Snakes or something are planning some kind of stupid stunt at the dance down at the gym on Avenue B at ten tonight. I got a call from Sergeant Martin just a few minutes ago, asking me to check it out and make sure everything doesn't go to hell any more than it has to. Making sure the world doesn't go to hell being my area of expertise, Martin seemed to think I was the best man for the job, and quite honestly I agree with him. I wouldn't trust these gang kids in the hands of any other officer but yours truly. I know how to deal with them. I know how they work. Just 'cause I keep a diary doesn't mean I can't give a punk what he deserves when the time comes.

Ali's not going to be happy about this little escapade I'm on tonight, but she'll have to live with it. It's what I do. I keep the streets clean, I keep the world from eating itself from the inside out. You break up enough fights, eventually you're gonna end up on somebody's bad side. Fortunately, to those punks all they know's my bad side. And they ain't seen the half of it yet.

8:45 PM

Let it be known that I told you so. Ali damn near bit my head off when I told her where I was headed. I tell you, for not being that tall, my daughter's got a set of lungs on her like you wouldn't believe. She can scream for hours enough to wake the dead when she puts her mind to it, and it seems like most of the time I'm the cause when she does put her mind to it. Figures. The hero's always seen as the villain. Not that I'm some kind of New York Superman, running around jumping over buildings in tights and a cape, but I battle crime same as any jumped-up news reporter with thick-rimmed glasses, and I could sure as hell beat him in a wrestling match. But how I ended up talking about this I haven't got half a clue. Anyway.

Ali's trying to play off like I'm too hard on the Jets, like they've got some kind of right to cause chaos and break every law we throw at them. It's funny, when you think about it. Can you imagine the Jets as a band of vigilante heroes, breaking the laws to save our souls, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor? Please. If there's one thing wrong with my policy, it's that I ain't being hard enough on them, not by half. I don't take lip from no one, and I sure as hell ain't taking no lip from a seventeen-year-old piece of nothing that thinks just cause he got a smart mouth and a couple of kids to back him up that makes him better than me. Riff, save me the melodrama. I got a job, a successful life, a family, wife and kids, even if one of the kids is becoming a total head case at the moment. What've you got? Three bucks in your pocket and a one-way ticket to nowhere. Exactly how far d'you think that's gonna take you?

Course, I know Ali knows that. That ain't why we've been fighting ourselves hoarse. She's got a thing for him. Yeah, that's right, a _thing_. Can you imagine how that'd go down? Alison Schrank, the lieutenant's daughter, and that kind of trash? Can you imagine her bringing Riff round for dinner, and the wife cooking up chicken Parmesan for him and him offering to help with the dishes? She'd get herself played and used and dropped like last week's newspaper, and she'd come crawling back crying and telling me I was right.

I'd take her back, too; it's just what family does. But let's not go down that road if we can help it.

9:00 PM

Out of the house, thank God, and lurking in the back of the gym waiting for the show to begin. God, I love lurking. It sounds sick, I know, but I can't wait to see the look on Tony and Riff and company when I pop out of the shadows and start taking them down to the station, one right after the other, almost like a parade. It'd be like Christmas come early. Or late. Or whatever. It'd just be perfect. One toe over the line, one wrong look, and he's mine. And those Sharks? Well, can't say I'd feel too bad about booking them either. Damn immigrants are forgetting their place, but I'm here to remind them. It's below me, below the damn street they seem to care so much about. Newsflash, compadres: this is the age of reason. And you'd better start kowtowing to the guy with the badge, or you ain't gonna have too many more options.

10:00 PM

Showtime. Let the games begin.

10:15 PM

Well, who'd've thought? I don't need to do jack shit in this joint, the boys are gonna take each other out perfectly fine without my help. I could say I wouldn't enjoy watching that more than anything else in the world, but I know and you know that I'd be lying through my teeth, so let's skip it and get down to business. The whole thing that's going down tonight is actually pretty funny when you stop and think about it. Tony the Jet, that Pole who really thinks he's something special, he started hitting on Bernardo's sister Maria, while ten feet away the Jets and Sharks are at each other's throats, getting ready to beat the living shit out of each other. Let's just say the love-making isn't doing much for anybody's ability to settle a problem with words, if you know what I mean... Romeo and motherfucking Juliet, ain't it something to see. If the Pollack poisons himself, I just want the whole world to know I called it first.

But damned if things ain't taking a turn for the exciting now. My best friend Riff and El Capitano himself are having at it full-swing. Unless I'm older than I thought and my hearing can't be trusted, some tactical shindig's being set up at Doc's Drugstore fifteen minutes from now. Gunslingers One and Two decided they're too cool for a dance at the gym or something, so they're headed out to the battlefield to plan the most efficient way to beat the shit out of each other. With a heavy dose of the snap-and-follow, the Jets cleared out faster than you could say Jack the Ripper, and the Sharks split through the back door just as quick. The only one left outta that crowd's that chick Maria, standing and staring around like someone pulled the rug out from under her. She looks so confused that I've half a mind to go up to her and explain why she should leave them bastards alone. It does more harm than good, no matter how sweet they look and how smooth they talk. You get caught up in their games and threats, and pretty soon you find yourself believing them. Pretty soon you find yourself exactly like them. I want to tell her all this, but I don't. Ali's already proved just how well that speech doesn't go over. Reason ain't holding much weight when teenage love wants to drown it out. And besides, I think I've got a rendez-vous at Doc's in fifteen minutes that I really can't be late to.

10:30 PM

Apparently it's trickier finding a cab on the west side at ten at night than you'd believe. No way was I walking cross-town, though. All them panhandlers and prostitutes and con jobs and the whole nine yards, it's enough to make you sick if you care about the state of the world these days. I know, I know, it sounds kinda off, a cop going out of his way to avoid the trash of the world, but I can't handle it in my condition. I need to concentrate. If I lose the image of Riff's smirking face, the one thing that's keeping me on this wild goose chase across town, and start chasing down any old kid stealing a penny's worth of candy from the drugstore, I'll never get anything done. You gotta pick your battles. Why win the fight when you can avoid it and win the war? If I lose focus, the whole operation's coming to pieces, and I can't handle that. No subplots tonight.

So, the taxi. I think the cabbie overcharged me by about five bucks or so, but what else do you expect these days? Fucking immigrants. They think they can float over on their rafts not speaking any English and we'll throw our money at their feet. Think again, hombres. No free rides. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch, not even in the land of Golden Opportunity. You want the dream, get off your lazy ass and get a decent job. I done it, so why not you? If anyone'll hire your ass when you don't even speak good English, fucking up your verbs. It ain't cute, all right?

Oh yeah. No subplots. My attention span's kinda pathetic. But when you're a cop it's hard to let some injustices slide. You're trained to make the world a better place, and you start gunning for perfection, which is a hell of a lot harder to reach than you think when you take the badge and first put on your uniform, you know? Maybe you don't know. Anyway, I'm getting out on the curb in front of Doc's as we speak. Let's hand back and watch the scum of the world play their parts.

10:40 PM

Not gonna lie. Some people bitch and moan about the nine to five, but let me tell you, I fucking love my job. Love it. Especially for moments like tonight. If you could've seen their faces when I swaggered into the joint! You'd'a thought it was judgement day and I was telling them they were all going straight to hell. Which basically I did, only not in so many words. They act tough, but Bernardo was about to piss himself, I swear. It went as silent as the grave when they caught sight of my face, a few dozen eyes staring at me like Abraham Lincoln come out of the grave to do a little tap dance for their entertainment. God, it was great. Even stupid people know where the power is.

They're planning some kind of rumble between the two gangs. Yeah, they're actually planning. Action and A-Rab ain't gonna just pop out from behind a trash can and start beating people with lead pipes, oh no. It's man-to-man, Hamilton-vs-Burr, all that jazz. I'd almost call it some kind of code of honor, if I didn't know these punks and illegals like I do. Ain't no honor there, just one twisted set of rules that bends around every time something new comes up so they can do whatever the hell they want.

I couldn't get them to tell me when or where or who specifically, but I ain't worried. I picked out my stool pigeon. That greenhorn in the Jets, the little blonde one with the curly hair and the Mighty Mouse T-shirt. Yeah, that's right, Mighty Mouse. He's dead serious, too, that's what gets me. You'd think he's eight years old still. What's his name? Baby John, or something. Yep, he's the one. I get him alone, exchange a few choice words like only yours truly can, and he'll be singing like the Von Trapps. If I can get him away from "Death Before Dishonor" Riff, it shouldn't take more than five minutes. He doesn't really want to be a part of this, I don't think. Peer pressure. They're expecting him to be tougher than he is. Their funeral, really.

We'll have men posted everywhere, ready to cuff anyone who starts swinging. Love the image, don't you? They walk tall, we'll give them twenty-five to life and call it an example for anyone else who thinks they're bigger than the law. The law's the ultimate. It's bigger than anything you throw at it: it just _is_. No exceptions. No questions. You fight the law, the law KO's you, every time. And didn't I tell them that?

Hey hey hey, don't try and play me off like the villain. I got a family to think about, don't I? Wife and kids to watch over. Manhattan ain't exactly the pinnacle of modern civilization, we ain't no utopia, we're kind of where the shit of the world goes to die, but that ain't no reason to let the kids run wild with Maltov cocktails and broken bottles shouting war cries and impaling elderly women or raping girls. They're not headed anywhere good, these punks. It's only a matter of time before they screw something up that no amount of hard work on the part of the badge can put the pieces back together. I'm gonna cut it off before it gets that far, just wait and see if I don't. The things they must've been planning, I can't stop thinking about them as I look for that damn cabbie that ditched me after ten minutes even though I told him to wait until I came back. They think this is so serious, they could try to pull any kind of crazy shit. Mustard gas, jousting battles, pistols at the OK Corral at high noon...

But I don't have time to think about that too much. It's a late night. The wife's probably afraid I got myself jumped by the Mafia (she tends to lean towards the dramatic). But one thing I'm completely sure about as I start the long drive back uptown to my apartment, the same thing I've been sure of since I started this job eleven years ago.

The youth of the world is slowly but surely losing its collective mind. I'm scared to death of kids these days.

Which is exactly why bringing down this whole song-and-dance is going to be such a pleasure. Good over evil. Old over young. Experience over jumped-up self-importance.

Me over them.

Which is the way it should be.

* * *

And there we have it, my pretending to be a crazy old man for a chapter! Next up is Anybodys, which I promise will be better than it sounds. I don't like her either, actually, but her chapter came out reasonably nicely, or at least what I have done of it. And then it's The Rumble, which merits capital letters for his epicness. I'm thinking of doing that one in two parts, though I'm not sure...

You know what to do. It motivates me, obviously, where very few other things will do that... Review! Please :D

**-RebelFaerie-**


	6. Anybodys: Self Centered

**Disclaimer: **See chapters one through five if you're still intent on suing me. Which I really hope you're not. Let's be friends, not legal enemies.

A thought here: who prowls searching for people who don't post disclaimers and hauls them off to court? Point number one: these people are creepy, and point number two: uh, none of us own anything. I think that's implied by the fact that we're writing on . But maybe I'm old-fashioned here. Whatever.

**A/N:** Well, here I am again! And it's only been, what, a week? Let's hope this inspiration lasts until I leave for band camp... But then I'm away in the woods where finding so much as cell phone service involves a combination of dance moves and yoga that would almost turn you off technology forever, so the odds of me finding a computer are not good. Hopefully I'll return by August and keep this ball rolling. Fingers crossed! In the meantime, let's keep rolling on.

* * *

**Six:**

**Anybodys:**

**Self-Centered**

_"I don't know why I'm feeling sorry for myself_

_I spend all my time wishing I was someone else."_

Saving Jane, Girl Next Door

_"You were a child that was made of glass_

_She carried her black heart passed down from your dad_

_If somebody loved you, they'd tell you by now_

_We all turn away when you're down."_

The Hush Sound, That's Okay

"You're gonna what?" I yelped, hoping I hadn't heard right. The Jets all looked at me like I was the stupidest thing they'd ever seen, but even that didn't bother me right now. I was too determined to get an answer to care what they thought.

"You heard us, didn't you?" Action sneered. I wanted to punch him in his smug little face so bad that it was all I could do to stop my fists from doing just that entirely on their own. I probably would've done it, too, if his head had been higher than three feet off the ground. "We're gonna have ourselves a nice little tea party with them Sharks, on account of how we love 'em so much. We'll chat about the movies, Elvis songs, maybe do some trust falls, and since you're so important to the whole thing you get the head of the table."

_I heard what you said, kid,_ I thought to myself, itching to pound his face into the sidewalk. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's being treated like I'm too stupid to understand what's going on. You'd think I'd quit hanging out with the Jets if that's what gets me, but you'd think a lot of things that make sense, that doesn't mean they're gonna happen.

"Lay off, Action," Riff snapped, stepping between us before we could have done something drastic. He turned to me, about ten degrees off apologetic. "Listen, girl. before Schrank walked in on us last night, we got some details down. We're gonna rumble tonight. Under the highway. Fair fistfight, the way it used to be, man to man. Emphasis on the 'man' thing."

"Yeah, 'cause you're the manliest of 'em all, aren't you, Riff?" I laughed harshly, trying not to show how much that had hurt me, never mind how much he said it. Maybe especially because of how nice he said it. "You don't ever need anyone's help."

"Baby, these aren't the Emeralds. They're PRs. You don't know what they're like. They don't fight fair."

I turned to look over my shoulder. Flawlessly curled red hair, top of the line clothes that you couldn't've paid me enough to wear (let alone having to pay that much on top of everything), pout permanently painted on her face, sure as hell the classiest streetwalker I'd ever seen. Graziella Van Wylder. Somebody shoot me in the face. Oh, so help me Jesus, I did not need that right now.

She wasn't alone, though. A handful of the brainless bimbo Jet girls had set up shop at their own table, just a few feet away from where their boys were plotting. Minnie, Pauline, some girl that was new and just hanging on Big Deal's arm hoping to get lucky. I knew she didn't have to work that hard, Big Deal would sleep with anything even halfway resembling a woman, but she didn't know that and it was too much fun watching her make a fool of herself to let her in on the joke. How'd we all know to turn up, you ask, if none of us were allowed in on the war council? This was the city, and we were teenage girls with telephones. Word got around. Rumors flew faster than a U2 spy plane. By eight o'clock that morning, everyone and their mother knew that the boys were fighting the Sharks that night under the highway overpass. Well, maybe the mothers were excluded. Most of us didn't exactly tell the truth when asked what we'd been doing last night.

I noticed I'd been excluded from the phone tree, but I had my own connections to all things Jet, and besides it's not like I was surprised. If I lived with a nice Better Homes and Gardens family and spent all my time making up my face and picking out my clothes so I could take it all off in twenty minutes with any kid with a fake name like the rest of them, maybe I'd be in the loop, but as things stood I didn't exactly fit in, you know? The girls made fun of me and my jeans, my foul mouth, the way my hair had never grown out of the pre-puberty permanently-looking-like-crap phase, both to my face and behind my back. To them I was just a gimmick and a joke. I wasn't about to give the whole thing up, though. Not when there was so much at stake.

"Never thought you'd hear me say it, daddy-o, but she's right," I told Riff seriously. In my mind I substituted "that brainless bitchy whore" in for "she", but I decided that was one of those things you don't say out loud if you wanted to make a point. "You think Bernardo's just gonna come up, shake your hand, and fight by the rules? You're smarter than that. I don't trust him, and you shouldn't either. I can rumble with the best of 'em, and you're gonna need backup, they..."

"Anybodys, shut up," Riff groaned. I glared into his endless green eyes, trying to make him see how hard I was working not to cuss him out. _Come on, Riff, give me some credit for trying._ "There's eleven of us guys, and we fought tougher cats than this mariachi band before. I think we're old enough to take care of ourselves by now."

"Ten," I said sullenly. I was losing and I knew it, but for some reason words kept pouring out of my mouth and I couldn't stop them. If I couldn't win by reasoning then I was gonna have to start hitting below the belt. "It's not like Tony's gonna show up anyway. He's too good for this now."

This, like I knew it would, released the caged animal that was always inside Riff, waiting to tear anybody who crossed him to pieces. "Now you listen up, girl," he snarled, pointing a finger at my chest like he was part of the police and about to arrest me. "I had enough of this, got it? Tony said he's gonna be there, so he's gonna be there, and that's all there is to it. You're not going, Anybodys, because believe it or not you're a chick and you're not a Jet, so get that through your head, all right? If you're hanging around us 'cause you think one of these days that's gonna change and we'll welcome you with open arms, you wanna think again."

I gasped. _Okay, why don't you just shoot me through the stomach and be done with it? At least then it'd be over when you're through._ People said things like that to me all the time. Action, Big Deal, Mouth Piece, it's not like it was new stuff. But this was from Riff. He'd never talked to me like that before. There'd always been that faint hope that he didn't hate me, that he didn't think I was pathetic, that there was a tiny little part of him that didn't mind having me around.

"But..." I stammered, "But, Riff..."

"Oh, give it a rest, Anybodys," Graziella sneered, crossing over to wrap one arm around Riff's shoulders possessively. "Can't you see he doesn't want you here anymore?" And like she was the lead actress in some perfectly scripted movie, she pulled Riff by the front of his shirt down to her height and kissed him full-on on the mouth. I could see the surprise in his eyes at first: he hadn't expected that, he hadn't planned that. _Well, of course he hadn't. _Graziella was a raging whore, she'd make out with any boy with a pulse that stood still long enough. I shouldn't be mad at Riff. I mean, he didn't do it on purpose as a slap in the face. But he didn't pull away, either. Once the shock wore off, he was obviously enjoying the attention and returned the favor.

Okay, I could take a whole lot of shit, I really could. I could handle Graziella's bitching, my dad's constant explosions, continuous rejection by the only guys I really wanted to get in with. But this, him and her, them, right in front of me, it was just too much. I couldn't watch; I felt my stomach turning, I knew I was about three seconds away from either having a complete breakdown or throwing up all over Doc's linoleum floor. Unable to face explaining either of those reactions to the Jets, I did the only thing I could think of to do.

I split.

The door banged shut after me as I ran desperately away from the messed-up, twisted, nightmare of a scene in the drugstore. I ran down the alley behind Doc's, and even though it sounds like the last thing I would do, or the last thing the Anybodys the Jets know would do, I sank down next to the trash cans and just sobbed. I didn't want to, let me say that. I wanted to be tough, I wanted to be strong, someone they could look at and maybe possibly respect, but the image of the lip-locked Riff and Graziella was burned into my eyes and it was destroying me from the inside.

It was _my_ Riff she was kissing. Since the second I'd seen him walking at the head of the Jets four years ago I'd known he was something special. There was so much more to him than commander-in-chief. I know what Graziella sees in him: a damn good fuck, someone to hang on her arm like the world's toughest show pony. But that's not _my_ Riff. He was unbelievably smart, even having dropped out of school in like the eighth grade. He had the biggest heart I'd ever seen, he loved his Jets like brothers and would have died for them without even having to stop and think about it. No one was as open, as honest, as brilliantly sarcastic, as knowing, as flawlessly perfect as he was.

And he would never, never look twice at me. _Well, why would he? _My mind was not nice to me at all as I considered what was going on; in fact, it got its sick kicks out of ripping me to pieces. _What are you, compared to her? Nothing. No one with eyes would pick you over her. I mean, look at her!_

"Having a nice cry, are we?" a girl's voice sneered.

Ah, dammit, it was rhetorical! I didn't want to actually look at her right now. My self-esteem can only handle so much half-starved, made-up perfection without coming down with a need to slap somebody in the face.

"Just leave me alone, okay?" I snapped thickly, disgusted at how weak and stupid I sounded through the tears. My God, why was I born so emotional? It really, really sucks, bursting into tears anytime anything at all happens.

Graziella laughed, her perfect silhouette standing with her arms crossed in front of me in the alley. "Why? So you can sulk and moan about how my boyfriend still likes me and not you? Well, are you surprised?" I stood up quickly, wiping my eyes on my sleeve and thanking Jesus I didn't wear mascara. At least I didn't look like a murdered raccoon. "I mean, really, when he can get the girl all his boys are dying to get with," she sneered, "what would Riff want with the gender-confused loser Alison Schrank?"

I froze, staring at her. I felt like all the blood had been sucked out of my body. My heart had stopped beating, my lungs had stopped breathing, my mind had frozen and dried up to nothing and I couldn't make sense of what was happening. All I could think was one word, over and over, endlessly: no. No. She couldn't know. No one could know. Not her. This wasn't happening. _This wasn't happening_, as my entire world fell in broken pieces around my ankles. No.

"What?" I choked, in a voice I knew wasn't mine.

Graziella grinned, obviously enjoying the angle. "Mm-hmmm, I know. The officer's reject psycho daughter, who's got the hots for the one guy her daddy's out to get. It's kinda romantic, in a pathetic way. I'm just wondering, how long did you think you could fake having a gang name so no one knew who you were? A month more than this? Six months? It lasted a whole lot longer than I would've thought."

"How the hell did you find out?" I managed unintelligently.

She laughed harshly. "We go to the same church, Ali, and your daddy don't exactly blend in with the rest of the world."

"Stop calling me that!" I screamed. The tiny strand keeping me connected to control and to reason had just snapped. I'm like anyone else, I have limits. With this girl they're smaller than usual. I didn't have to listen to her. I didn't have to take this.

"Why? That's your name, isn't it?" she sneered, and my hand completely on its own free will shot out and slapped that self-satisfied sneer from her face. Her mouth formed a perfectly round O of shock as I began to scream, out of control, unable to handle the complete death of everything I knew and loved.

"Shut up!" I screamed. "Shut up, shut up, shut up! Who do you think you are, going on like this? Think you're so special and so pretty that any guy would sell his soul to fuck you, and Riff's just so lucky to be with you he pinches himself every morning to make sure it's real? Girl, like he wants to be with someone like you! You think he doesn't have enough on his mind without dealing with your bullshit? You think just 'cause I'm not pretty and I'm not skinny I don't deserve him? Well, excuse me if I don't weigh forty pounds and use half the world's supply of makeup to be able to look in the mirror without throwing up and have men lining up outside my room every night to fuck me..."

"SHUT THE HELL UP!"

Now it was my turn to stop as if I'd lost the ability to speak. Oh, how the tables had turned. Graziella had frozen to the spot, her face white as a ghost, her posture stiff and her hands in fists. I was shocked; this was different from the mocking anger she always used with me. I had said something to really get to her. What...

"Don't talk about what you don't understand, Anybodys!" she almost wailed, her voice rising shrill and hysterical.

I blinked once. "What did I..." I began, but she cut me off in that high-pitched, panicked voice.

"Oh, for God's sake, Anybodys, you want to know? You really want to know? My son of a bitch stepfather used to fucking do just that, okay? Since I was twelve! You happy now, you callous bitch?"

The silence stretched out between us painfully, almost vibrating with the tension. I didn't know what to say. Graziella sank down against the wall of the alley, her redheaded head in her hands, staring passionately at essentially nothing. I sat down next to her awkwardly, knowing that now it was my turn to say something but also knowing that I was absolute shit at knowing what to say at times when it actually mattered. I couldn't even understand what she'd told me. How could somebody... I couldn't even think it.

"I'm so sorry, I didn't know..." I said lamely.

Graziella choked back a sob and ran her hand over her eyes. "'Course you didn't know. I never told anybody," she said, her words halting with the tears we both knew were dying to be let free. "I mean, what could anyone do about it? So I never brought it up, but... it's been eating me alive all this time. I just didn't know what to say, how to bring it up, who to tell... I never meant for it to come out like this. I was supposed to have planned this all out, not just scream it to whoever's there at the time. Who am I kidding, I had no idea what I was going to say," she added harshly. "God knows I can't tell Riff." I started to protest that oh yes she could, Riff would understand, our Riff would listen, but she stopped me before I got started. "Oh, I know what he'd say, he'd feel bad and everything, but nothing would ever be the same and you know it. I don't want to be his pretty little victim. Every time he held my hand, every time he kissed me, he'd be thinking about it, not me."

An enormous lump had reappeared in my throat at the thought of the two of them kissing, a conflicted Riff and a sobbing Graziella, clinging to his strong arms like a lifeboat in the ocean. I knew I was gonna cry again, I just wasn't completely sure why. For him, for the loss of him, for her, for me, or for all of us, all alone in this fucked-up world where kids dueled and died in the streets and fathers raped their daughters and the one that you love and the one that loves you are never the same person?

Immediately Graziella thought that the image of the kiss had brought on my tears. She wasn't heartless, and she wasn't as cold as I'd thought, but she was self-centered, I'll give her that. Then again, aren't we all? Self-centered, I mean. May as well center on the one person who's always gonna be there for you. Apparently you can't count on anyone else.

"I'm so sorry, Anybodys. I know he's special to you. I mean, how couldn't he be? And I know he deserves better than me. Damaged goods," she spat with disgust. "He doesn't deserve half a person, someone broken, but I love him and I never want to see him hurt. I'm hard on him, I know it looks like we hate each other, but I can't let myself get walked all over ever again. I can't let him go, because I have to believe that all men aren't the same. It sounds like a Hallmark card, I know, but I don't know how else to put it."

I saw her sitting there through my own tears, tiny and vulnerable without her bad-ass shield to hide behind, with her makeup running in streaks down her face, and I put one hand on her knee. I spoke to her, but there was another face in my mind, a thin boy with dirty-blonde hair and endless green eyes that seemed to follow me no matter where I went.

"Trust me," I said with a sad kind of smile, "they're not."

"Whoa. Now I just need the other two horsemen of the apocalypse."

We both jumped to our feet at the sound of the drawling, accented voice. Standing at the opening of the alley, arms folded and wearing an expression like he'd just seen a three-headed cat, was Riff himself. Who else, at a moment like this?

Graziella quickly wiped her eyes on the back of her hand and laughed, a high, trilling laugh that fooled essentially nobody. "Jesus Christ, baby, you scared me! How long have you been there?"

If Riff was skeptical of how real this emotional one-eighty was, he didn't give a sign of it. "About five minutes. Just long enough to see everything I thought I knew collapse in the street." _You and me both, kid._ How long have you two been best... Hey Anybodys, what's up?"

Another time when being able to act would have been an awesome skill to have, I thought bitterly. Graziella could perk up on a dime, but it was going to take me longer than that to stop my eyes from watering, especially with her hanging off his arm like that... "M-my grandma died," I finally managed somewhat lamely. Of course, my grandma Rose had died three years ago this January, but there was no reason to tell Riff that. It wasn't lying exactly, just rearranging.

Riff winced in genuine sympathy and put a hand on my shoulder. His touch burned me, and I couldn't tell if having him pull away would make it better or worse. "Oh no, girl, I'm sorry," he said softly. "I know, my momma died when I was eight, it fucking hurts like nothing else. But you're strong, you'll get through it. It'll pass."

I blinked a few times, and the tears seemed to be stopping; at least the edges of my vision were less blurry by now. Just as well; I hate crying in public. It makes me feel like everyone's staring at me feeling uncomfortable, wondering if they should be saying something. "I know, it's..." I broke off, looking into his eyes, then bravely continued. Sorry Grandma Rose, sorry God, but I wasn't talking about her anymore. "It's just hard to know that's it, that's all we'll ever have, that meaningless kind of stuff. We were never as close as I wanted to be."

Graziella looked at me in a way that let me know she knew what I was saying, when Riff only thought he did. He smiled his kind smile that stabbed me through the heart, and she even managed one that wasn't smug or self-important.

Poor, broken Graziella. Poor, broken us.

"Well, you still got us, don't you, Anybodys? You still got me?" he asked.

In that moment, I hated my name more than anything. I didn't want to be Anybodys, I wanted to be _his_. I wanted him to look at me like he looked at her, but I also wanted him to look at her, if for her sake and not mine. I wanted everything that was bad for me and suffered disappointment when I got it and when I didn't. Friends, that's what he meant. The ten thousand miles between friends and more than friends. But I could never let him go in my dreams, not when I thought of what we could have had, if we'd been nothing like ourselves. I would cry myself to sleep over those dreams forever.

Once a Jet, always a Jet.

"Yeah," I said, faking a smile when my heart was crumbling. "I guess I do."

* * *

Well, there we are: my attempt at Anybodys. I know she's a fan favorite (I'll admit, going by canon, I don't see it), but she's fun enough to write. And I think it's time now to make a confession: this story from here on out (and basically from the beginning, I'm noticing more and more) is super Riff-centric. Why? Because he's my favorite.

My favorite Jet? My favorite character? No. Just my favorite.

If you're here for Sharks, I'm trying to make an effort in the next chapter to level the playing field. It's a little pre-rumble action, but I'm having some trouble coming up with a title for it... And then we get to the real action. (No, not Action. I don't like him. But that's a whole different story)

Peace, love, reviews, and Riff! My four favorite things...

-RebelFaerie-


	7. Jets & Sharks: Red Horizons

**Disclaimer:** Owns nothing!

**A/N:** Hey, I'm back! And I'm actually kind of excited about it, because I've written this chapter and the two afterwards, and have the third next one all planned out in my head. I was on a bizarre roll where I actually liked everything I was writing, so I decided to just go with it, and this is what I came up with. It's a little different than my previous chapters because it's my take on the Tonight quintet that I so loved from the musical: a bunch of different focuses and stories all meshed into one. I decided to experiment with third person for this one, and I may try it one more time before I wrap this up, but either way...

Well, let me know what you think. I'm excited about this, but I'm also biased. Obviously. So, reviews? Or maybe I should let you read it first...?

**

* * *

**

**Seven:**

**Jets/Sharks:**

**Red Horizons**

"_Try to leave a light on when I'm gone_

_Something I rely on to get home_

_One I can see at night, a naked light_

_A fire to keep me warm"_

David Cook, Light On

_  
"So give me something to believe in, a breath for the breathing_

_So write it down I don't think that I'll close my eyes_

_'Cause lately I'm not dreaming, so what's the point in sleeping?_

_It's just that at night I've got nowhere to hide_

_I will write you a lullaby"_

Jack's Mannequin, Hammers and Strings (A Lullaby)

"Will you stop that?"

A-Rab's arm stopped exactly where it was, poised in the middle of pelting the back of the man's head in front of them with unpopped popcorn kernels. Seemingly put out, he pulled an exaggerated pout and looked at Pauline, seated next to him, accusingly. "Well, what the hell's the point of coming to the movies if you can't have a little fun, huh?" he asked sullenly, but his eyes betrayed how amused he actually was by her concern.

Pauline rolled her eyes and flipped up the armrest dividing their seats, situating herself so that she could lean against his side, her legs drawn up next to her and folded primly to preserve her modesty in her dress. "I don't even know why we still come to the movies," she whispered in his ear. "It's not like we ever watch them."

He gave a theatrical sigh, like he couldn't believe he actually had to explain this. "It's dark," he said pointedly.

She smiled. "Oh yeah…" she murmured, changing her posture just enough so that their lips could meet, which they did. With great enthusiasm. Among several other things.

If it was possible to smile from ear to ear with your tongue inbetween your girlfriend's teeth, that's what A-Rab found a way to do. You couldn't buy moments like these, and you couldn't plan them; they just happened, and it was your job to take full advantage of them when they happened along. He might play the part of the tough guy in front of the cops and the Sharks, but fact was even though he'd never turn tail and run in a fight, even though there was no denying the high that walking with the Jets gave him, there was nowhere he'd rather be than right here, in the back of a darkened movie theatre with some dumb Clark Gable movie unfolding on the screen in front of his closed eyes, so close to Pauline that it was like there was one person and not two taking up these seats. They paused for breath, totally unconcerned by the fact that both couples on either side of them had gotten up and moved in silent protest. He reached over, intending to flip a piece of hair out of her eyes.

"That was nice," he whispered laconically.

She raised an eyebrow ironically. "That was an understatement," she commented, then hissing a sharp and angry "hey!" as A-Rab's fingers redirected themselves to start tugging her dress off one shoulder, flashing her bra strap to the public, obscured only by a thin layer of darkness. "Can we not do that in public, please? My pastor's sitting four rows up, for God's sake!"

A-Rab laughed, the sound carrying prominently through the mostly quiet theatre and ruining the dramatic tension of a British actress on-screen shaking her fist to high heaven and swearing to the angels that she'd never be hungry again. Several important-looking people turned in their seats to give the pair personalized Glares of Death. "But he's fine watching you make out with me in public? I've got to meet this cat. I gone to the wrong church my whole childhood!"

"He still wasn't exactly supposed to see me," she explained tiredly. "Can we wait until tonight, please? Waiting's good for you. Makes it more exciting, you know?"

Now it was A-Rab's turn to raise an eyebrow. "Tonight? Well, if you wanna get naked and have some fun under the highway with all the boys and the Sharks watching, okay, I guess. I'd rather they didn't see you without clothes, myself. Call it paranoia, but don't'cha think someone'd get the wrong idea?"

Pauline felt her heart sink into the bottom of her stomach. Oh, God. The rumble. She'd completely forgotten about it. Diesel verses Bernardo, for control of the West Side streets, whatever good that was going to do anybody, really. There was no talking anybody out of it; this was what the Jets had been waiting for half their lives, it seemed to her. It was no good trying, Pauline knew this. But she also knew that she had to try anyway.

"Baby, please don't go tonight," she pleaded quietly. Sure enough, before she could have gone on, he just grinned.

"Don't go? And have Riff show up at my house at two in the morning and rip me limb from limb with his bare hands? Mm-hmm. Right. It's completely safer for me to go to the fight, babe. That way I have a shot at living."

Pauline elbowed him hard in the side, exacting a small yip of pain from the Jet on her left. "You're not even taking this seriously, are you?" she snapped, a little louder than maybe she meant to.

"Babe, I never wouldn't take something like this seriously," he said grandly, the look on his face mortally offended. She snorted pointedly. "Well, okay, maybe sometimes I would," she edited. Pauline gave him The Look, and he shrugged and raised his hands in surrender. "Okay, so I never take anything seriously," he agreed finally. "But this time, I really am. Scout's honor," he finished, though Pauline would have been hard pressed to find somebody less likely to be a Boy Scout.

"Be careful," she told him urgently. "This isn't like your normal fights. The Sharks are crazy, babe. They're not taking any prisoners, and it's gonna get serious before you even know what's going on. I've seen them around, I know, and you'd know too if you got your head out of the clouds long enough to pay attention. If you get yourself killed, boy, I swear I'll never forgive you," she finished.

A-Rab's eyes sparkled with amusement. "Well, we can't have that, now, can we?" he asked wryly.

The man that A-Rab had been assaulting with popcorn kernels up until recently finally stood up and turned around to glare at the two teenagers, his flawlessly trimmed mustache aquiver with aggravation. At the sudden appearance of the human walrus, A-Rab dissolved into a fit of distinctly un-manly giggles, while Pauline gamely kept a straight face.

"Do you two mind shutting up or leaving?" he demanded in a much-wronged stage whisper. "Some of us paid good money to actually watch this movie!"

"Sucker…" A-Rab muttered under his breath, referring to the age-old Jet policy: everything's free as long as you don't get caught.

Pauline smiled politely at the man. "Oh, sure, sir, we'll be quiet. Sorry to bother you," she said, doing a reasonable job of pretending to be sincere. Half-placated, the man turned and sat down again in a huff of self-righteous indignation.

A-Rab glanced at Pauline askance. "Um, what was that?" he asked. "You know that I can't be quiet for ten minutes at a time."

She grinned insinuatingly. "Oh, sure you can," she whispered, and she presently silenced him by blocking his lips with hers. It stopped his talking, but nothing could stop the voices in her head. Voices that wouldn't stop whispering that she'd better make this afternoon's kiss last. You never knew.

--------

"Not long now. It has been eight months already," Estella answered the unspoken question in Chino's eyes, knowing exactly what he was thinking by his expression, by a feeling in the air, by spending all her time with him ever since she had found him here a week and a half ago. He smiled so hugely it seemed impossible for him to be feeling any more excited than he was showing, though one would have been surprised. Hesitantly, he reached out a hand towards Estella, the halting uncertainty in his expression earning him the reward of an easy laugh. One of the most beautiful sounds he knew. "You can touch it, Chino. You are not going to hurt it."

"I do not know much about… this…" he admitted, laying his fingers on her simple cotton shirt, beneath which was evolving like a divine miracle his future son or daughter. Estella cocked an eyebrow as if to say "no, really?", and Chino flushed red. Suddenly his face registered absolute shock, and he looked up at her in disbelief. "He… he kicked me!" he stammered, feeling his heartbeat pounding in his ears with adrenaline like an addict taking a shot.

"He must know his father," she said brightly. "It means he likes you."

So much about the joys and pride of motherhood is said that sometimes the expectant father slips through the cracks, but anyone who saw Chino's face would not have made such a mistake. His handsome face was absolutely glowing with happiness as he kissed the pregnant Estella, then settled back on the couch in his apartment, nestled in next to her. It seemed like they always had to be touching, like he was afraid if he let her go for even another second she would vanish, she would disappear and he would be alone again. "You may tell him I like him also," he grinned.

"Or her," she reminded him. "We still do not know. I know you want a boy…"

"Lies!" Chino laughed. "As long as it is healthy, I do not care. I have been thinking of girl's names. What do you think of Esperanza?"

Estella rested her head on Chino's shoulder. "Esperanza. Hope. It is beautiful. So perfect, when you think… Yes. I like that. And if we have a boy?"

Chino shook his head. "I'm not sure. You have ideas, I know. Women plan baby names before they meet a man, do they not?"

Estella playfully punched him on the arm. "Maybe we do, maybe not. Do you like Raul?"

Chino bit his bottom lip, turning the name over in his head. Raul. Raul Rivera. "It sounds like a Cuban dictator," he admitted after a moment.

Estella laughed. "So it does. So we pray for a girl, then?"

The smashing of a glass object against a wall from upstairs cut off Chino's response, followed by a shrill female voice shouting and cursing in verbose Spanish. Chino sighed deeply. Anita. Ever since the Jets and the looming fight had surfaced into their lives in New York, tensions between Bernardo and Anita, always at the boiling point, had exploded into an untameable mess. He could hear them going at each other's throats at all hours of the day and night nowadays.

Trying valiantly to speak over the clamour, Chino took Estella's hands and turned so they were looking eye-to-eye. "Do you want to leave this place?" he asked her in a soft voice.

She blinked. "What?" she breathed.

"To Puerto Rico?" Chino continued, his voice alive with passion. "New York is not the place to raise a child. It is a zoo, full of monsters looking at other monsters. Do you not see what this city is doing to us all? We are becoming less than animals. Back home in San Juan our child could run on the beaches, play in the sunlight, live and be free! Your father is here now, we could be married and no one would stop us…"

"Is this another way to run away, Chino?" Estella asked sadly, and though Chino flinched like he had been struck across the face his eyes never left hers, not for one moment.

"No," he said seriously. "No, for once I am not running away. This is running in the right direction for the first time. We are running to something, not from something."

The silence stretched on for a moment, punctuated by the screams and thumps from upstairs, until Estella gave him a sad smile. "This is no place for a child to grow up," she said. "Look at the Jets. They grew up here. I will not raise another child like them. I would run anywhere with you, Chino. I hope you know that."

"Tomorrow!" Chino's excitement was rising; he stood up and began to pace. "After the rumble, I will come back and pack, and in the morning we will be on our way. I have money enough. We will make it. Buy two tickets to San Juan for me tonight on the first boat in the morning. Trust me."

Estella looked at him, at this sudden and all-encompassing happiness arising from the merest possibility of leaving this rat race of chrome and concrete. She wanted to warn him, remind him of what they were leaving and what they were leaving it for, but she could not dismiss the sound of Bernardo and Anita from through the thin ceiling. Would that be her and Chino in six months' time? Was it the city, or was it the people in it? She could have asked all of this, reminded him of all of it, but she said nothing. This was best for Chino. Best for the child. All she wanted was happiness, somewhere they could live and be safe and never disintegrate into what Bernardo and Anita had become. What did it matter if it was Manhattan or San Juan? As long as they were together, as long as this New York nightmare the Sharks lived now was over, what did anything matter?

"I trust you, Chino," she said softly. And what did anything matter but that?

--------

"Get out!" Doc thundered, throwing open the door to his back room with so much force that it slammed into the adjacent wall and knocked several framed photographs from their nails to the floor. The bell-like tinkling of the protective glass coverings bounced off the plain cement walls as Riff and Graziella leaped to their feet, he pulling his tee-shirt over his head, she hastily making use of the straps of her dress like they were supposed to be used. The slightly faded, now-exposed subjects of Doc's pictures stared up at the two of them accusingly, but neither had the grace to blush.

"Ah, c'mon Doc, we ain't bothering nobody!" Riff protested.

Doc spluttered for a moment, at a loss for words. "Ain't… you ain't… Listen, kid, I don't got a say in what you do with your life, but with Jesus H. Christ as my witness I got a say in what and who you do in my back room, you got that? You… you don't live here!" he finally finished.

Graziella cocked an eyebrow; the top of her dress, though in its usual position for her, could have done well two or three inches to the north, in Doc's modest opinion. "Actually, he basically does," she said lazily.

"'Basically' don't cut it where I'm from, dollface," Doc snapped. "Now get, before I call the cops on you!"

"All right, all right, jeez, we're going," Riff said offendedly, taking Graziella by the hand and leading her out the whitewashed door into the street. "Come on, El, let's split. Find somewhere we're wanted."

"Good luck looking," Doc muttered, slamming the door behind him.

Graziella rolled her eyes and lit up a cigarette, cradling the tiny flame on the end of her lighter like a baby hummingbird, beautiful and fragile. "Someone skipped his happy pills this morning," she commented bitterly, as the two walked out of the alley into the street, lit with the heavy, lazy golden fog of summer. Nobody on the street looked twice at them, and they returned the favor gladly.

"Told you we should've gone to your place," Riff told her, arching his back in a stretch that left the sunlight dancing on the planes of his face artistically.

"Like hell we should've. I told you, my dad's coming home this afternoon, and I'd rather get caught by ten thousand Docs than him," she snapped.

He shrugged, plainly indicating he didn't really give a damn who caught him. "We'll have to do some catching up tomorrow night, then," he suggested with a conspiratorial wink that left her in little doubt what "catching up" would entail. "Let's hit up Vinny's Bar, they open at eight and the owner owes me a favor. The back of his place makes Doc's look like a real shithole, I can tell you that."

She narrowed her eyes in that way of hers that let Riff on instantly to the fact that he'd said something wrong._ Well, what else was new..._ "What's wrong with tonight? It's our one-year tonight, Riff, not tomorrow night. Unless you've got more important things to do…"

He groaned and stopped walking, looking her straight in the eye in a way that meant business. "Listen, girl, I'm sorry. We been over this. We're taking the Sharks down tonight. You don't think showing them PRs the door and getting our street back is important, is that it? Cause if that's what it is, then you're hangin' with the wrong guy, and maybe we've both got some thinking to do."

"You don't think we're important?" she challenged. She squared her hips against him in a fighting stance so well-used it was almost second-nature, gesturing with great enthusiasm as she talked. "Other things matter too, Captain Jet, more than your precious boys and your precious war. Are we a game to you? I wanna know now, does this matter at all to you?"

Riff put his hands to his temples and took a deep breath, regaining his composure for a minute, and the self-importance of this gesture made Graziella see in flashes of red. "This is bigger than me, what we're doing tonight, girl," he explained as if to a small child. "It's bigger than us. I don't care if you understand, but this matters."

"Oh, I understand!" she snarled. People were beginning to look now: tourists and locals alike had stopped on their ways to watch the war between the beautiful girl and her man, with all of humanity's morbid tendency toward the unfortunate. "That matters and we don't, I understand. You never cared about me, did you?"

"That's okay," Riff said coldly in a half-raised voice meant to cut. "You care about you enough for the both of us."

_Smack._

A gasp ran through the impromptu crowd of onlookers as both boy and girl stood frozen, her hand still raised and stinging, their eyes wide with horror. The silence ticked on in immeasurable seconds, and the crowd began to awkwardly disperse, return to their previously scheduled lives and pretend they hadn't seen. A red mark began to rise on Riff's face, a perfectly preserved handprint, fingers splayed in a possessive grasp. Without a word, he turned and walked down the street, uptown, not speaking to anyone or even acknowledging their existence with his eyes.

"Riff! Come back!" Graziella called desperately, but he did not turn or respond and soon he was lost to sight. "Please be careful," she whispered though she knew he could not hear, the view of the street damp and blurry around the edges. "I need you to come back."

--------

Anita couldn't even remember what had started this fight anymore. It simply was, just another fact of life. The sun would rise, the clouds would roll across the sky, a screaming, raging, incomprehensible fight would be raging through their apartment. Yet the world turned.

"Do you want them to hear downstairs?" she hissed in her deadly voice, venomous as a cobra but low, so that all the poison made its way to its target without any being wasted. "Or do you not care what they think? Well, that is a lie, obviously you care so very much about what people think of you. Are you going to challenge all the neighbors to a gunfight to keep their good opinion?"

Bernardo stormed across the tiny apartment, each footstep as vicious as automatic gunfire. "Why you constantly are surprised by my doing what I set out to do is amazing, Anita," he said in a raised voice, toeing the line between restraint and explosion.

Anita crossed to face him from the other side of their thrift-store kitchen table, her hands on her hips, expression as accusing as it was within her power to make it. "What did you set out to do?" she challenged, progressively louder with her hysterics. "Pick fights with street children just to fight against something? Fight for a piece of the street? Leave me alone every night wondering if you will come back alive because of a piece of the street? Ruin your friends, the husband of your sister, risk them getting arrested or worse because of your pride? Pride, Bernardo, pride. Are you proud of this?"

Bernardo slammed his hands down on the table, spitting flames from his black eyes at the scratched surface. A glass vase balanced on the side of the table, a parting gift from Bernardo's grandmother, shook dangerously in these vibrations and toppled over the edge with the slow-motion tragic grace of a suicide victim, shattering into a million irreparable shards on the hardwood. Neither Anita nor Bernardo so much as looked up at the sound of the echoing crash; really, it was ridiculous that they still had any glass objects left in the house to break. They should have known better by now.

"Do you listen to yourself when you speak, Anita?" he shouted. "You blame the entire world on me, when I am the only one trying to make things better? You think that because I am standing up for us I am trying to destroy us all? You really believe that?"

"Standing up for us?" Anita gave a harsh, derisive laugh. "Standing up for you. I do not need you and your child army to fight my battles for me."

"Because you would have found a way to come to New York on your own, is that what you say? I fought that battle for you," Bernardo snarled. "I fought our way to a better life for you, because you did not have the courage to fight."

Apparently that had been the wrong thing to say. All Anita needed was that one two-word prompt. New York. America. Land of golden opportunity and equal protection of the laws. Source of everything that ever went wrong with the world. Land of sugar-coated painful truths. Land of gunshot midnights and rat-ridden apartments, where husbands wandered the neighborhoods for children who deserved a quick stab through the ribs or worse. So many things for Anita to say about Bernardo's corrupting, intoxicating New York, but she said none of them. And yet in five words she managed to say them all.

"Do you call this better?"

"Hey, keep it down, wouldja? Jesus Christ!"

Anita and Bernardo's eyes both narrowed at the fed-up yell of their elderly neighbor from the upstairs apartment, a seventy-year-old veteran who lived with his wife and had a voice that could echo through ceilings without effort. Anita snatched up a nearby broom and thumped it three times against the ceiling in response. "Stop talking before I make you!" she snapped in high, carrying Spanish. Disgusted, Bernardo turned and picked up his jacket, walking toward the door without a word. "Where are you going?" she demanded, fighting a battle to keep the fear and hurt from her voice, but either Bernardo did not notice it or he didn't care.

"I have places to be tonight," he said coldly. "Do not stay awake for me." The door closed with a snap of finality, and the sound of his padding footsteps on the stairs cut through the sudden silence. Anita sat at one of the wooden chairs around the table, acutely aware of the empty ones surrounding her.

"But I will," she whispered to the air. "I always do."

* * *

And there we are! My next chapter is a little shorter but, I think, about ten times more epic in the closing, so maybe I'll get that up in the next week or two. Fingers crossed! I don't know why my updates come in waves of two or three chapters at a time, followed by months of nothing... My muse is the world's biggest flake; I can never count on it when I need it.

Yeah, that's right, self, blame the muse...


	8. Bernardo: Thy Will Be Done

**Disclaimer: Owns nothing. But then again, neither did Shakespeare, really, and he never had to write these stupid things on the top of _Othello..._ Grrr...**

Hey! I'm back! Man, I love Thanksgiving break! Time to actually post things and not be studying the history of Greek theatre instead! Don't get me wrong, Sophocles was a G, but this is more fun. As a plus, my creative writing class (holla at the best class in the history of ever!) is going to be on computers for the next week, so maybe I'll hit back here with chapter nine, if I find the time... No promises, though. I'm in the midst of a short story that's actually due in a few days, so that has to take precedence. Sorry.

Well anyway, here we are with the ultimate chapter so far. I love this. I'm super proud of it. So I'm going to leave you to read it and stop rambling in the top margin like I usually do. (By the way, I know that Bernardo has a pretty impressive vocabulary for someone speaking English as a tenative second language. If it bothers you, imagine him speaking it in Spanish. I only speak English and French and don't trust Google Translator, so I can't do the dirty work for you. Je suis desole.)

Next chapter is Maria! Bum bum bummmmm...

Enjoy!

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Chapter Eight:

Bernardo:

Thy Will Be Done

"_If heaven and hell decide_

_that they both are satisfied_

_Illuminate the no's on their vacancy signs_

_If there's no one beside you_

_when your soul embarks_

_I will follow you into the dark."_

_Death Cab for Cutie, I Will Follow You Into The Dark_

So it all comes down to this. One night that will either save us or destroy us. My Sharks and I walk the streets of the city that loathes us, to the chain-linked lot beneath the highway overpass. Walk tall, the Jets always said, but the Sharks do more than walk tall, we walk through the darkness with our fists ready and our heads held high They think they can walk on us because of the color of our skin? We will see who wins in a fight, children playing at war or grown men who know it. Sharks were raised in a whirlwind of blood and bullets. It will be but one more night to us.

One more all-deciding, all-important night.

I should stop thinking, I know that. Too much thought, it distracts me. I lose my focus. But as we arrive in the shadowed, still-empty lot, as we hop the fence with as much noise as so many shadows, all I can think of is Anita. I wish I had not left her as I did this afternoon. It seems we are always and constantly fighting, that we neither of us can be at peace and happy together and at the same time. I know she sees the problems here as well as I do, but she would run back to the past the first chance she was given and I would not go back for all the world. The past is not known for its pleasant welcome to those who ought to have left it behind. We fight tooth and nail for every square inch of ground in New York, it is true. But at least here we have a chance.

Come on, Bernardo, I tell myself harshly. Focus. Where are the Jets? It is unlike them to be late to something which has this kind of importance, even they must feel it. Their leader has been straining at the leash to fight me one-on-one from the first day we moved here. And I intend to give him that chance.

Chino, from my right, gives me a look that says he can read my thoughts to the letter. "Do not worry, Nardo," he whispers in Spanish. "They will come."

And how I cannot wait for him to be proven right.

No sooner had my friend spoken than I hear the clink of chain-link from across the lot. I find myself subconsciously counting heads as they arrive; a one-to-one fight, yes, but I do not trust these Manhattan street rats any more than I trust the police we are so adeptly hiding from. I count ten in all, perfectly aligned with my ten Sharks except for the important fact that we have something to fight for.

Paralleling Chino and I at the head of the pack, two Jets stand before the rest of them. One is that tall, skinny boy with the quick mouth they for some reason I do not understand have chosen as their leader: Riff. The other's name I do not know, a giant with easily a head and fifty pounds ahead of the other and a quietly determined look in contrast to Riff's hatred simmering below the surface. Instantly I sensed that this was my man. How like a Jet never to fight his own battles.

I roll my eyes and convey as best I can without words how much this childish fear tires me. "Are we ready, then?" I ask. It feels good to make the first move, to know that the Sharks are at my back and absolutely dying to get this under way. Whoever strikes first captures control. we are through waiting for others to tell us when to act. Now is the time, for no reason other than that we says o.

Riff grins and shrugs. "What, you don't wanna sing the national anthem first?" he drawls.

I could feel the giant brick wall that was Moose behind me dying to snap the kid's neck in half like a twig, but with a tiny flick of my wrist I stop him where he stands, more through fear than force. Plenty of time for that later. "We had planned on an a capella rendition of La Borinqueña, but we were not sure if you knew the words," I respond snidely. "Can we please get this started? We have waited for you long enough."

Riff and his wingman share a look and a nod. "Nardo, meet Diesel," Riff says with a patronizing half-bow. "He'll be handing your immigrant ass to you this evening."

Diesel is easily four inches taller than I, but he scares me less than a Manhattan socialite's lap dog. I am above fear now, running on adrenaline, and I have no doubts that I could lift and throw a car right now if the mood strikes me. Diesel is nothing, but that is the problem: he is nothing. He is not the one I have been waiting for. He does not lead the boys who treat us as second-class citizens, he does not declare himself an Aryan God and walk the streets of this second Jerusalem with his nose in the air. No, there is only one prize that will satisfy me tonight, even though I could have taken any of them.

"I imagined you would try and pull something like this, Riff," I say in my best sneer. "Pull up the biggest muscleman you have and let him take me while you watch from the sidelines. Fine," I go on with exaggerated graciousness to match his. "I will be happy to take your slave. You see, Jets may hide like children, but the Sharks are not afraid to show their teeth."

The phrase "afraid to show their teeth" affects Riff more than I could have possibly hoped. I can almost see the thoughts in his head glowing with hatred and offense. I had not let loose a hit, but I had connected where it hurt, in the boy's pride. He was a child trying to walk in a grown man's shoes, but if his attention was drawn to the fact it hurt like a slap in the face. For me, I am amused, watching him attempt to follow the path I had been walking since the day I was born.

Diesel puts a hand across Riff's chest in an attempt to calm him or restrain him, but he is having none of it. "You wanna see my teeth, Speedy Gonzales? You wanna fucking see some teeth?" he snarls. "I got a bite worse'n you think!"

"Please," I smile. "Enlighten me."

The Sharks behind me are flooding the whole scene with a torrent of angry Spanish, promising death and defeat in words they did not understand, and most of the Jets are shrieking like demons with a vocabulary few of us had either. The one in the Mighty Mouse shirt stands petrified, and his fear disgusts me. This is war, chico. If you are afraid to get close, stay at home and watch television.

Almost as if an inaudible signal had been sounded, Riff and I find ourselves in the center of a circle made of Jets and Sharks, surrounded by sneering faces and hate-filled yells, but I see and hear none of it. I do not pay attention to anything but my prize, like any wild cat intent on the kill. With every step forward Riff takes another back, but somehow I do not feel cowardice in our graceful, dance-like movements. He is waiting for the moment, we both are, in this self-induced fishbowl silence. Only tactics. Business as usual.

And then I feel it, and I am sure Riff did too. The change. The shift. The unspoken word hung between us as we lock eyes: "now." The Jet dives right as I swing hard left, and with a shattering tumult of a virtual glass wall breaking the noise returns full-force. Their passion only enhances my passion as Riff's fist clips the edge of my shoulder, as the blood pumps in my ears and I connect with his nose, as the satisfying war tattoo of blood on the Jet's face makes the spots that dance in front of my eyes as his kick knocks the wind out of me absolutely worth it, I feel all-powerful surrounded by the anger and feeling of both Jets and Sharks and know, know even as Riff deals me matching blood tattoos, that this is what we fought for, this power, this control, this feeling that I believed would stay with me until I died. Clearly we are equal to these children, as Riff doubles over, bordering on a vomit from my elbow to his neck. Clearly we are equal to these children, as I fling him to the street, pinning him there with my knees. You want your street, Captain? Take it.

The yelling reaches a chaotic climax, and from out of the corner of my eye I see a shadowed movement beyond the chain-link fence but coming quickly closer, close enough to jump the fence as if it had wings. It shouts a few words before it enters the tiny circle of streetlight that serves as a spotlight on me and Riff.

"No! Don't! Stop the fight!"

_Mierda_, I think with bitter venom. It is that jumped-up Polack who thought movie-star good looks could buy him respect and authority. I hate him as much as I hated Riff, but there would be time for him later. Now, I am busy.

"Run along home, boy," I snarl. "The grown-ups are busy."

"Tony, beat it," Riff growls, trying to stand, but he is outdone by both my weight and gravity.

"Not until you call this off! Someone's gonna get hurt!" Tony shouts, pushing his way through the circle. I grin, an expression like a cobra baring its fangs. He honestly thought he could pull apart twenty men straining to kill each other with his bare hands!

"Jesus Christ, Tony!" Riff shouts.

"Somebody hold him!" another Jet shouts, and in a second Diesel and another one his size have the Polack pinned by the arms, leaving the bloody production full reign to carry on. My fists seem unconnected to me. I hardly know what I am doing, until Riff's street-smart kick shocks me enough to lose my grip and he scrambles to his feet. The Sharks lose control, screaming and swearing.

I see a small flash of shine arc through the air, a dark shooting star thrown by maybe Toro, maybe Moose, and without thinking I snatch out a hand and catch it. The cold, heavy feel of the metal in my hand is not at all an unfamiliar one, but I freeze, nailed to the spot, all the same. Riff stares at me. I stare at Riff. My thumb experimentally, independently flicks out the blade of the switchblade knife that somehow is in my hand.

How had this happened? I do not even know if I am completely surprised or if we had subconsciously known it would come to this all along. Were we all prepared to do murder, all of us? I do not know what I am prepared to do anymore, but like so many things, a switchblade is not something you could throw back once you had caught one.

Our eyes, mine and the Jet leader's, must have seemed to be twins of one another. The shock and uncertainty I feel stare back at me out of green-grey eyes. Slowly he raises his weaponless hands, a gesture not of surrender so much as helplessness and an outreach for some form of guidance.

"What's the matter, boy?" Anxious jeers. "Afraid to get serious and fight like men?" Is this how men fought, then? Is this how men died?

"What would you know about being men, fucking wetbacks?" a short Jet yells back, and I can't even focus enough to tell him he had mixed his racial slurs. "How 'bout we even the score?" He reaches into his pocket and pulls out something we can both identify without even seeing it.

Like a puppet on sick, twisted strings, Riff catches the switchblade left-handed. He faces me with an expression I can't read. The Jets and Sharks around us scream and curse and suddenly the noise makes my blood run cold; this is the chaotic reasonless harpy hatred of the damned, and Riff and I are the only two standing still in a world that had lost control. I can't run; if the Jets don't stab me in the back on my way out, the Sharks will. The price for betrayal, every gang had it. Nothing new. Nowhere to go but here. Nothing to do but this.

I look into Riff's eyes for one more second, hoping he could read the message written there. I'm sorry, amigo. I'm so sorry. I could swear I see the Jet nod, so slightly. And then we are flung into motion again as I pounce. Both of us practiced streetfighters, he slides left and slashes back but I sidestep the hellish glowing blade, the same dance as before but with desperately higher stakes. I dimly hear Tony shout something, telling us to stop, but Riff and I both know it is too late for that. It is a game to the spectators, but I am the one who feels the knife's blade cut through my jacket and open up a bloody gash on my arm, the one who has to know each step three steps beforehand just to keep up, it is my heart beating so fast and loud the street should have vibrated with the very power of it. Riff, pale as a ghost, stabs at me and in the motion loses his balance; I hear the gasp as he hits the ground with one hand, clamoring to his feet, but my knife moves faster than my mind or his legs.

He stands in front of me, legs still not straightened all the way.

My arm flashes in front of me.

The switchblade sticks with an ungodly grating noise between the boy's ribs.

Time stops. There is no sound, no movement, no breathing, nothing. Nothing except for Riff's scream, an agonized scream that hangs suspended over my shoulders. Blood stains his white tee-shirt, pouring out in a slow-motion waterfall as he sinks to his knees, through water, through time and space. Those green eyes never turn from me, not even as the scream slowly fades, fades, fades to nothing. The silence.

My God. I have killed a man. The knife in his chest. My knife. The blood. His blood. His blood on my knife. His closing eyes on me. Bernardo, what have you done? Dead. Dead.

"Riff!"

Tony lets out a roar, his best friend's name, the one name I cannot bear to hear. Do not speak of this, I will him. If you speak of it, words make it real, give it life and death. If you speak of this, it has happened.

Both Jets and Sharks seem struck motionless. It is no trouble for Tony to shake himself free, shoving people from his path to stand across from me, Riff's crumpled body between us. All and any trace of his movie-star good looks seem to have vanished with Riff's voice, incinerated in his rage and replaced with a twisted, animalistic need for vengeance. He snatches the knife from Riff's limp fingers and holds it at me like a knight's sword, challenging me to a duel.

"You killed him, you bastard!" he roars. "You killed him! I'll fucking kill you!"

There is no time to think. He dives for my throat, and I hit the ground and roll, my hand grabbing the knife still in Riff's chest and yanking it free. A fresh, softer scream joins the one always and forever echoing in my head; oh God, he is dying still, bleeding to death in the street, oh God, God... Tony's knife stabs at me but through some divine intervention I do not deserve I am on my feet and away, acting on a panicked, wild instinct. I am all arms and legs and senses without thought. His moves are not hard to follow: rage has left him obvious. My knife, the bloodthirsty animal that can never be satisfied, knows what to do.

I feel my soul crumble and burn. I feel the blade sink deep into Tony's heart. I feel him, with his dying breath, plunge his knife into my own.

Either my ears are buzzing or the silence is that complete. Tony and I sink to the cement as one, and as I close my eyes I feel little to no pain. It is right that I should die with this night. It would be more right that we all should die, but not all of us were so lucky. Three men lay dead by my hand tonight. Riff, Tony, and Bernardo. All dying, all dead, and for this? Is that my blood I feel rushing through my fingers, being driven out by my own heart? Self-destructive to the end.

Through my closed eyes I see a face, shadowed black eyes that could not see me through the dark and the blood. Ah, my Anita. Now I can feel pain. Left in a fight for a fight, Anita, you deserved better than this. Than me. Than all of this. This land of bloodred opportunity. Land of the brave, home of the dead. I have killed three men.

I place myself in God's hands. God, who knows I never wanted this to happen. God, who knows I have loved as a man can love, have done good as a man can do, have sinned as a man can sin. Judge me through the blood on my hands. Judge us all with clear eyes, my God.

Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in


	9. Maria: Garden of Broken Mirrors

**Disclaimer:** Let it be known that I have disclaimed whatever I was supposed to disclaim.

**A/N:** Hey, I'm back! And I'm on winter break, and it's finally snowed (because I REFUSE to have another Christmas where I'm jumping over giant mud puddles to get to church like last year, that was ridiculous), and I'm done writing college essays at last (my last one was me and Riff in a coffee shop chatting about our hopes and dreams, so maybe it's a good thing that I'm done before things got really out of hand), so those are just a few reasons for my good mood.

Yeah, I really AM in a good mood, even though you'd never know it by the content of this chapter...

We've almost made it, according to the road map I have planned out in my head, which is pretty cool considering I started this in the eighth grade and have never finished ANYTHING that took me upwards of six years to do. I think, though this is very tentative, there's about five chapters left, but they should come fast because I already have one written, one halfway done, and another one planned out so well in my head that it may as well be written. So maybe by the end of these two weeks we'll be a chapter or two away from the end? I'm holding out hope here.

Anyway, I'm gonna stop talking, because I always ramble in these things and I should probably go into some kind of twelve-step program for it.

But before I go, a shameless plug: Reviews are lovely. Bernardo would want you to, in his memory.

* * *

**Chapter Nine:**

**Maria:**

**Garden of Broken Mirrors**

_"Pretty girl is offering what we confess is everything_

_Pretty soon she'll figure out what his intentions were about_

_And that's what you get for falling again, you can never get him out of your head_

_It's the way that he makes you feel, it's the way that he kisses you_

_It's the way that he makes you fall in love."_

Sugarcult, Pretty Girl

I try not to look at the clock again, I really do. I simply cannot help it; my eyes are drawn to the two hands on the wall like some kind of magical being. Of course, it has been only thirty seconds since the last time I did this, and the slowness of every passing moment is enough to make me want to scream. Time tonight is at once my best friend and my worst enemy. How many hours until my Tony and I are together again, together forever? So few, and yet this last half-minute alone has taken five hundred years. How can one evening be so endless?

Perhaps if God smiles on me, this night will be endless as well.

Sitting on this sofa will drive me crazy in the meantime, so quickly I stand and pace the length of our sparsely furnished living room, my back determinedly to the clock. Up and down, back and forth, the soft feel of the white carpet under my feet as I hope to help time move by moving myself. Anita watches me from the dining room where she gathers shards of broken glass that litter the floor with an even mix of exasperation and concern on her face. I am sure I must look on the brink of insanity tonight with my arms folded across my chest, pacing like a restless ghost and glancing at the clock every ten seconds.

Though she says nothing and is the same stone statue that my friend always is, I know that Anita feels the same, inside. Women. Always left to pick up the pieces and worry.

But I cannot complain. I sent Tony, I sent him to stop this. He is doing this for me. He is doing the right thing. I only wish I knew what was happening. Sitting in this room away from him, away from my brother, away from everything is the worst possible punishment anyone could ever have invented.

"Do not worry so much, Maria," Anita says, gentle and chastising at once. A portrait study in contradictions. "Chino will be fine. He and Bernardo will be back soon, and he would not want you to worry on his account."

I smile, but it is distracted and my heart is not truly in it. Anita assumes it is because I am still thinking of Chino and so does not punish me; she does not know it is because I am giving Chino very little thought. My Tony, my Anton, out in the streets where a war is taking place, how can I bear to think of it? How can I bring myself to think of anything else? I cannot stand to have him away from my side; is this how Chino's Estella feels? Is this the feeling Anita is hiding from me? My arms feel so empty without Tony's warmth to fill them.

At last I stop my pacing very suddenly. I cannot stay in this apartment any longer. The walls are closing in on me, choking me with the silence and leaving me with nothing but how much I wish Tony were here. Decisively, I cross to the closet and pull out a white knit sweater. It is still the stagnant end of summer and the chirping of the crickets reminds me that the air is warm and heavy still, but I feel cold anyway alone on the streets that are so far from where I grew up.

"Where are you going, Maria?" Anita asks as she quickly straightens up from the floor. For a second I think I see a look of panic flash in her beautiful black eyes as she sees me leaving, but as quickly as it came it is gone again. I almost believe that I have imagined it. Anita is so strong, so powerful, and she needs no one but herself, least of all me. It is the thing I admire most about her. I find I, like most, always need someone with me to feel safe. I have always believed Anita was superhuman, above such feelings. But I know what I saw.

"I am going for a walk, Anita," I say with a smile. "Just to clear my head. I will not be out long."

"Stay away from the highway," Anita warns me. I want to tell her there is no need, that because of my Tony there will be no fighting there or anywhere tonight, but of course I have told no one my secret and so I nod and promise to be safe.

The door closes softly behind me, and as I climb down the stairs and breathe the fresh air of the streets below I cannot help but picture Anita, standing there still, waiting for us to return to her. The only problem with being the steady center of the universe is that you cannot move to chase the planets as they orbit closer and away. But our future will not be her present. Tonight is the beginning of a new life. Only hours more and Tony and I will run away together, we will be married, and no girl alive will ever be as happy as I.

I walk the empty summer night, drifting through the misty air like an image from a dream, seeing faces and futures in each shadow, faces that show themselves to me alone and tempt me with their sweetness. The night seems buzzing with life, the streetlights and bright dots of fireflies dancing like the lanterns of fairies, and I smile at the beauty. So much to enchant on this night that so many seem to fear, but then it seems I always find beauty in the most unlikely and terrifying of places. There is something beautiful in the fear itself, the excitement of the unknown, the charm of hesitancy, the electricity of a stolen kiss. I did not know the heights that could be reached by breaking the rules, but now I think I have been transformed too completely to ever be that submissive little girl from San Juan again.

"What are you doing out on a night like this, senorita? You of all people should know how dangerous tonight is."

I jump and turn to look for the source of the New York voice that has interrupted my dreams. It does not take me long to find him, though I find his parked squad car split seconds before the man himself; the thin, angry policeman that so torments Chino and Bernardo. Lieutenant Schrank.

I nod at him in the smallest show of respect possible. "Good evening, sir," I say politely. "I was only taking a walk."

"Mmmm," he says, emerging from the hiding-place he has made for himself, the alleyway beside Sweeney's Lot. He could not care less what I was doing; it was Bernardo he was after. "Well, I wouldn't be walking this way for much longer, princess. Your brother and his compadres are having a face-off in this lot with them Jet boys later tonight, or didn't you know?"

I give him my most innocent look. "Fight?" I ask, enjoying the novelty of not having to lie about this. "There will be no fight tonight, officer."

Schrank snorted. "Well, at least the PRs got one thing straight. Leave the girls and the kids out of it. Probably best you don't know nothing. Get on home now. It's too rough out here for a pretty girl like yourself."

"I will be on my way," I tell him. He does not even acknowledge this. All his attention is focused on the empty lot again, both hands on the end of his pistol, waiting for something that he does not know, but I know, will never come. He stands like a statue, disappearing into the summer haze as I walk downtown.

He called me pretty, I think to myself. The streets are too rough for someone who is pretty. He makes beauty sound so fragile, a lily that will be crushed to powder by a breath of wind. I wonder if I was pretty in San Juan, where bullets ripped the streets apart nightly. I wonder if Anita is pretty, iron-willed, unbreakable Anita. I think of beautiful, angelic Tony, who would fight the world for my sake, and save them for it too. Pretty can survive the streets, I decide; he is wrong. Nothing has ever been as lovely as it is since I have met my love, surrounded by hate and fighting and war. The streets themselves have some kind of charm of their own. They must, or why else would the Jets and the Sharks stake their lives on them?

It is only human nature to pledge our lives in defense of the beautiful.

Emerging around a slate-grey corner, I see a collage of flashing lights and neon colors like an enticing advertisement for heaven. I smile to myself and walk closer, thinking how fitting it is that this night when all good things are promised should take me to my favorite part of the city. Times Square, where everything is beginning and ending at the same time, all the time. In the months I have been here, I have probably come here more often than any other place.

The cars seem to part around me like the Red sea as I walk to the center, a traffic island, and tilt my head back just to look. Expensive clothes and Broadway musicals dance over my head in vibrant Technicolor, things I have never seen and never knew I wanted until right this very moment. I love the unstoppable life of the place, as people rush around me even at this time of night and I feel like the only one who is standing still. As much as Anita and Chino can say against America, and as much as Bernardo and I agree with them, this is what keeps the two of us hopeful. We have seen these glowing promises hovering above our heads like notes dropped from angels. This need for life and progress and motion will always be my little part of this massive city, and I will always love it for that in spite of itself.

I start to laugh to myself, surrounded by so much neon and electricity. Let them think I am out of my mind, let them. When Tony comes back this will be our life, this isolated corner of the world where it is always the lingering warmth of late August, while the rest of the world hides inside to avoid the cold relentless snows of January. Somewhere in the distance I hear cracks and bangs, and I gasp as bright red and gold fireworks sparkle on the edge of the horizon, somebody's defiant celebration of summer even as it slips through his fingers. The last remains of the sparks flutter to the ground like pixie dust, and they are swallowed up by the night and lost to me.

I turn away. How long have I been here? Five minutes, five hours? Time plays its cruel tricks on me again, or maybe I have simply forgotten my watch. In either case, I should be going home again. Anita will be wondering where I am. Oh, what if Tony has come back for me already? A laugh jumps from my throat at the thought of the inquisition he would get from Anita if he came without me there to protect him. That poor boy, nobody deserves that.

My goal of home in mind, I cross the traffic that moves exactly where I need it to go and take the streets, the veins and the life of this city, back in the direction that I came from. I do feel better now. The walk has done me good, I can wait now. I can comfort Anita with imaginings of the passionate reunion with Bernardo that I as his sister know better than any is not going to come, not if his past record for interacting with her is anything to go by. Yes, there will be flames, there will be heat, there will be Black Orchid if Anita has anything to say about it, but though this is what Bernardo will give her tonight it is not the only kind of passion she is hoping for. I can help her hope, though. I can do anything I must, for it is only passing time until my real future begins.

Oh Tony, you have saved not only the Jets and Sharks tonight, you have saved me. Such a gift for saving people from themselves.

Footsteps ring out down the dark street, footsteps that are not mine, and I hear hurried whispers.

"Run! Faster, do you want to get caught?"

"I'm scared, what..."

"Don't talk, run!"

Before I know what is happening, a fast-moving dark shape flies out of the shadows and crashes headlong into me, almost knocking me off m feet. His friend manages to skid to a stop several feet away. It only takes seconds before I recognize them, and a surge of joy leaps into my heart. Indio and Juano. So soon? Then there cannot have bee a fight. Tony must have done it! I say a small prayer of thanks in my head.

In the exact opposite of my reaction, both Sharks lose all the color in their faces when they see me. Juano is trembling like a leaf and seems to be seconds away from crying. Even Indio, self-assured and boldly confident Indio seems badly shaken.

"What has happened?" I ask them. "You look like you have seen a ghost. Do not act this way, boys, you frighten me."

"Oh, Maria," Indio chokes, and my heart loses all its joy through an icy hole punched through its side and replaces it with the sick chill of fear. I have never heard his voice like this, so afraid and sad and angry and confused all at the same time.

"What?" I demand, and my voice breaks in panic.

"They're dead, Maria! Dead, all of them, all three of them, dead," Indio chokes, the words echoing off the buildings in disbelief, as if they are repeating it to themselves and trying to make sense of this madness. Dead? No one can be dead. Tony has stopped the fight. He promised me. He promised.

"Get a grip, Indio, they'll hear you!" Juano stammers, panicked, but I cannot keep my voice under control either.

"Who is dead?" I shriek. "Tell me what has happened!"

"They pulled knives," Indio says brokenly. "It was a scene out of hell, Maria, all those bodies. Riff and Tony and, and, and Bernardo, they killed each other. They are all dead."

Someone has pulled the street out fro under me. The world is tilting at a drunken angle and I am falling off of it into the endless darkness.

My brother is dead.

My Tony is...

I cannot think the word, this is a lie, this is a filthy, awful, horrid lie.

"No!"

The second the word has left me I turn and flee down the street, my feet pounding out their gunfire noises. No, they are not dead, none of them, this is a mistake, I have only to make it to the highway and I will see that there is no one there and this is all a joke, a sick joke that no one in the world would ever find funny. It is night but the darkness feels wrong, it pulls at me and slows me down as streetlamps blur past like headlights on the highway.

And then I am here, the chain-link fence separating me from the empty lot where I see...

No.

No no no no no no no no

Yes.

Three unmoving shapes in the shadows.

A cloud of pigeons scatter in the face of my scream, the wail of a police sire in manic denial. My Tony, my beautiful perfect angelic Tony, my one, my only, my future...

Te street becomes a garden of broken mirrors, a hideous maze of shards of broken glass that distort and twist what was five minutes ago the most beautiful scene in all of existence into a painting out of the wailing suffering depths of hell, something fractured and irreparable with shards that cut like daggers and further destroy the scene with the permanent stain of blood.

I climb the fence and land in the shadowed log, and my knees hit the ground between my brother and my Tony, seeing the blood and the shafts of the knives still in the chests of the two men I loved more than anyone. Bernardo's proud nose and strong shoulders in the dirt, Tony's dark face empty and his voice silent forever...

My screams are joined by the siren in the distance. Too little, too late. Four people have died tonight. Where were you before the world fell into madness? Some things cannot be stopped. Tony could not stop this war. The police could not stop death. I cannot change anything. I can do nothing but be, but live on alone, but try to make my mind believe the tragedy that has already destroyed my heart for tonight and all the other endless nights that can only follow.

Indio and Juano have to drag me away from Bernardo and Tony, have to take me home to Anita, have to sit me on my bed and turn on the light, have to lie and say that everything will be all right. They have to say this. But I know that the world as I knew and loved it has ended, no matter what they say.


	10. Riff: City on Fire

**Disclaimer**: I own nothing. Actually, this time I own about a character and a half, which is kind of exciting... Given, they're not real big parts, and it's pretty obvious that one of them existed. However, neither of them have been charactarized under copyright, as far as I know, and I've never read about them before. Therefore, I'm claiming them. It's a nice change of pace to be able to claim something...

**A/N:** This chapter was posted maybe a week or so ago, I know. However, it disappeared last night, underwent some magical transformations (my first-grade teacher called them "revising and editing" with the reverence and repetition of two words spoken directly Unto Him From God), and appeared again this morning slightly more exciting than it was before. Hopefully the R and E was done for the better; I know I like it better now this way. Either way, enjoy!

* * *

**Chapter Ten:**

**Riff:**

**City on Fire**

_With just a look, they shook, and heavens bowed before him_

_Simply a look could break your heart_

_Dreams of his crash won't pass, oh how they all adored him_

_Beauty won't last when spiraled down_

_The stars that mystified, he left them all behind_

_And how his children cried, He left them all behind_

AFI, Miss Murder

I've never felt so light before. I don't know what to do about it, but it doesn't matter. It's like someone's turned off gravity, and I'm drifting away through the night sky, my arms and legs spread away from me and reaching into the darkness. I close my eyes and throw my head back, feeling the cold air filling my lungs, and it feels like what you'd imagine a black hole would taste like if you ever got the guts to swallow one. The only image that comes to my mind is a figurehead on a ship, still anchored to something that she can't see behind her, just knowing that she's soaring through the air at a million miles an hour and the black waves are just below her, waiting to crash over her if she makes a mistake.

I don't go for religion, I know for a fact that heaven is a load of shit, but I think this might be what eternity feels like.

For no reason other than the easy fact that I can, I try directing the half of me that it feels like I am now. Whoa. Now _that's_ a trip. With half a thought in any direction I drift around like a piece of trash in the wind; left, right, up, down, backwards somersaults that probably would have broken my neck about three minutes ago. It should feel like I'm some kind of superhero, but I can't call up any excitement. I still feel like I'm missing half the picture. The black hole in the pit of my stomach can't be because of the coldness of the air. Last time I paid half a second of attention it was the end of August. And last time I paid half a half a second of attention, I couldn't fly. The thought doesn't freak me out like maybe it should, but it's still there, nagging me in the back of my head.

"Hey, Ryan."

This shocks me so bad that I pull a crazy gymnastic move in midair trying to find out where the voice came from. Obviously I ain't quite got the knack of this "moving around" thing yet, but that's not the reason that I feel like someone's pulled the cosmic rug out from under my feet and the black hole in my stomach started sucking in everything around it. Or, you know, whatever black holes actually do. I know the voice, even with my eyes closed I'd recognize it anywhere. For the last few years, I've been hearing it most with my eyes closed. Some intuition that probably makes a bit of biological sense causes me to flip over and look behind me towards the top of a chain-link fence, easily fifteen feet tall that nobody with any brains at all would try to climb, where a girl is somehow sitting cool as you please. She might as well be in the back row of a movie theatre for all she seems to care about it. I look at the girl, her wavy, shoulder-length hair that's exactly the same color as mine, her skinny body in beat-up jeans and a black tee-shirt that for some reason don't make her look like Anybodys, those ocean-blue eyes that look nothing like anybody's I've ever seen.

Using my new powers of mid-air motion, I put myself right-side up and wave, even though it's probably the stupidest thing in the world to do when you come face-to-face ten feet off the ground with your little sister that's been dead for four and a half years. "Hey, Em," I say without any emotion that I could name right off the bat. For sure it ain't one I've ever had to use before. "I'm gonna admit, I wasn't exactly expecting to see you here."

"Wish I could say the same," she murmurs, then jerked her head to point out the available spot of fence at her left. "Come up here."

Easier said than done, but after a few fucked-up direction changes I manage to make it up there and sit next to her. The pointed spikes at the top of the fence don't feel like too much of anything at all, but when I take her hand that's resting on the metal inbetween us it's almost solid and warm in my fingers. It's the feeling equivelant of looking through a piece of frosted glass; almost clear, almost right, but still wrong somehow, distorted just enough to make you wonder. I squeeze her hand and realize that under any other circumstances I'd probably have broken down and started crying or otherwise making a six-year-old girl of myself, but right now all I feel is the deepest calm. It's like what I've heard heroin does for you, though I never had the cash or the death wish to try it out myself. You're below everything, or above it. Nothing matters except this moment, whatever thought you're having or not having right at this fraction of this second, and even that don't matter all that much anyway.

"What are you doing here?" I ask, looking into her face. She's gotten older, I realize. She was only twelve when she died. She's got to be about sixteen now. I don't know where she got her looks from; maybe our mom was pretty before she got so strung out. Either way, she'd've drove all the boys crazy, if anybody had been able to see her but me.

Her expression is way older than even the sixteen years old she's somehow managed to be. "I thought you'd want someone here for this," she says in almost a whisper. "I had to watch this all by myself the first time around. It's hard when you don't know if you'll have any company. I mean, it's hard anyway, but I had to be here for you. You were always there for me."

"Watch what?" I'm afraid I already know the answer. The confusion of floating around in the night sky is fading, and everything is making a sickening amount of sense. I look down towards the ground, fifteen feet below us, and see a shape lying in an abandoned parking lot under the highway. It's a person, I know that now. He's dripping blood from a stab wound in the chest that's ripped through his shirt, even though dripping's not really the right word. It's more like watching the Hudson River behind a paper dam. Something's stopping the flow, but not much and probably not for that long. I see the breath grating through his lungs as he shakes with every uneven inhale, see the spasm of his fingers. I take a breath to steady myself, gripping Em's hand tighter. She has to anchor me. The waves are getting higher. I can feel myself starting to drown in this.

"You're dying, Ryan," she says quietly.

I look down at the boy on the ground, the boy that I know with the sick certainty of the damned is me and becoming less so by the second. I want to turn away but I can't; now that I've seen it, my eyes are glued to it like any other person's to any other tragedy. "I know," I answer, and my voice is much weaker than I'd thought. "Does it always take this long?"

"Not usually," she tells me, like that's supposed to reassure me. "This is the worst. The waiting. And the watching."

Yeah, that much I figured out on my own. I don't think I can watch this, as I quickly become sick to my stomach. I don't know if I can call what I'm feeling sympathy pains if they're so intense that I literally feel like my insides are being destroyed, or if the person I'm feeling sympathy for is me. Probably there's no name for them at all, since words don't come close to covering it. I hold Em's hand as my anchor and watch as the life starts to slide away from me, and it becomes easier and easier to hold onto her, I feel less and less of the fence that I'm sitting on. My eyes are so focused on the wreckage of me that when I hear the voice drifting through the night I have no idea where it came from, and for the second time in recent memory I have to look around wildly to find it.

"Well well well, what have we here, boys? It's still alive." It doesn't take me long to find the source; after all, there's a whole pack of them, not just one. The one at the head of the group, a kid not much older than me with an expression of hate not unlike the one that I'd always worn when I was living better than this, he was the one talking. Even though I didn't have a name for him I'd be hard pressed to forget his face, to forget any of their faces. Once a group of people's started being one of two things you dream about every night, once a group of people's responsible in your mind for every last fucking thing that's wrong with the world, you generally don't have that hard of a time remembering their faces.

The Sharks had come back. Well, I could hardly blame them. Switch roles, I'd'a been the first to do the exact same thing.

"Sorry to interrupt, Captain Jet. Were you about to go out for drinks after you and your men bring Bernardo down? This situation calls for celebration, does it not?" I'm going to be sick within seconds, I just know it, if I have to watch myself look up at this Shark from my deathbed on the pavement with that expression. I know exactly what I'm thinking, though how I'm thinking it is beyond me at this point and really beside the point anyway. I see the pride in my eyes as I grit my teeth and somehow I stand up. The me on the ground blinks several times to see straight and sways to the left like a drunk, but I don't fall. I stand there, a dead man walking, ready to see this through to the end. Why? Why does this have to take so long? I don't remember signing on to be entertainment for God. He can get his cable fixed, my own little tragedy isn't so important that it has to stretch on forever and ever.

"Guess what. Bernardo is not finished with you. And neither are we."

Em and I both hiss a sharp inhale as the Shark's fist pulls backward, then slams with the venom of a cobra into my face. I collapse to the ground again with a moan, but the Sharks don't let up. They surround me in a jeering, screaming circle, and they hit me and they hit me and they hit me. I want to scream, I want to fly down from where I am and destroy them all but I can't move, can't even find the thought to understand that that's me they're beating, that's me they're killing, that's me on the ground. It can't be me. I would never take this.

"Well, Marguerita?" a different Shark sneers to one of the girls hanging in the circle, and there's a new note in his voice now, not just hate but amusement, the shadow of a laugh. "What do you think? He's a good-looking boy, no? And he won't say no to our kind now, will he? He's given in to us, you might say. You want him?"

"No," Em whispers, reading my thoughts. "No, no, no, no…"

And Marguerita walks towards me like a model on the runway. I have no emotions left for this; my mind is exhausted and fuzzy and all I can register are the sights. If I feel anything about this I don't know what will happen to me in this state. If I feel anything else, would I explode into a wisp of smoke, would I break into pieces and drift off into the wind? I just see it, see her goaded on by the cat-calls of the Sharks into caressing my face, my chest, my legs, her hips grinding with animal violence into the crotch of my jeans, the way she kisses my mouth like she's injecting poison.

"This is awful," Em breathes, knowing that the words are inadequate, we both know it, but what else are we supposed to say?

"Oh yes, he is a catch, no?" Marguerita sneers, her face inches away from my ear. She slaps me hard across the face, and the Sharks roar with laughter.

"I'm not a toy for them to play with," I say, not looking at Em, my eyes trapped on the tragedy. "How long can they possibly do this before they just want to finish it?"

"Not much longer," Em tells me quietly, and she pulls me into a one-armed embrace, her arm more solid than ever. "It can't be much longer."

She's right.

"His boys will not want him back, now that he has touched one of us," Marguerita hisses. "Nobody will want him. He is good for nothing." She stands up and steps backwards, inviting the circle of Sharks to draw closer. Finally, she says the words, the ones we both knew were coming.

"Kill him."

Somehow I can look away. I look at Em's face, look into her dream-blue eyes that are desperately trying to tell me that it'll be okay. I want to believe her, I want to believe her so bad that I don't think I can ever want anything else ever again. Come on, Em, take me away from here. I want to go where you're going.

"What are you doing? What… Get away! Leave him alone, you dogs, you animals! Get away from him!"

I hear the voice and I don't hear it. I see the empty lot under the highway and still I don't see it. I see Em's face in front of me, feel her hand on my shoulder, and then something changes. The scene as I see it explodes in a whirlwind of different shades of black, and I hear the screeching of the wind and the echoes of voices I know well on all sides of me in the vortex. The voices rip at my ears, screaming as I fall…

Shrank's condescending, bitter sneer. "You better hope you and them Sharks finish each other off, boy, because if you don't, I will."

Doc's hard, exhausted voice. "You ever gonna do something that matters? You ever gonna stop fighting for something you can't keep? Tell me, Riff, you ever gonna stop living to die and start living to live?"

Em's small, child's cry through the dark. "Ryan, Ryan help me, please, help,_ please!_"

And suddenly I land with a thud on the ground. It hurts, which is surprising, but I stand up and brush myself off, looking around. Even before I realize where I am, I realize who I'm with, and the realization reignites the cold pit in my stomach. I haven't seen my mom in years, not since I was nine, but the minute I see her face I know it's her. She looks like me, kinda, I guess; I can see myself in the way she lounges against the wall of the 6th Street subway station, smoking a cigarette in that "yeah, I'm gonna die, so what?" way she always did and glaring at me. I look down at my shoes; I hate meeting her eyes. The dirty, littered station stares up at me through the transparent soles of my Converse, and instantly I know what's going on. Guess we've moved on, kid. Should've known I wouldn't end up with Em in the end. To go where she's going I guess you've gotta do something to earn it. Some things they should give you some kind of warning about in advance. Some advance warnings I should've listened to. I hold up a hand to the light experimentally; sure enough, I see my mom's face through it, and the wall through both of us. She rolls her eyes at me, like she can't believe I'm being this stupid.

"Goddamn," I breathe. Somehow I didn't expect hell to be the 6th Street subway station. Kinda fitting, though, in a way.

"You really fucked up something fierce, didn't you, kid?" Mom drawls. She never called me by my given name, not even as a kid. If I felt like psychoanalyzing the shit out of that, if it wasn't about six feet too late, I could say some bullshit about how that made it that much easier to switch to a gang name, to make my own identity, but headshrinkers aren't worth the space they take up and it doesn't matter anyway. I am what I am, or I guess I was what I was. Knowing the reasons ain't gonna change that.

Something about the way she's looking at me pisses me off, makes me want to stand up a little straighter, makes me want to hurt her though I have no idea how to go about it. "I don't do shit halfway," I answer calmly. "Nice to see you in hell. I'd say it's a pleasant surprise, but it ain't pleasant and I ain't surprised."

Mom laughs, a harsh smoker's laugh that's almost a cough and turns my hands into fists. Don't you dare laugh at me, not when I'm alive and sure not when I'm dead. Ain't nothing about this is funny. "Must've got your smart mouth from your daddy, huh? Know I never taught you talk like that. Besides, this ain't hell. Not yet."

I blinked. Not hell? Well, if it was heaven then God had one sick sense of humor and there'd be some pissed-as-hell Evangelicals come next Sunday. "Mom, I'm dead, right?"

"_Mom, I'm dead, right?_" she mimics me in an exaggeratedly high-pitched voice, then laughs.

"Mom, I got fucking stabbed in the chest. I talked to… I saw… How can I not be dead?"

She takes a long drag, like she needs it to get through this conversation. "Hell yeah, you're dead. How many living fuckers do you know can see through their hands? But we're not there yet. I came to the station to meet you. You know, parental guidance?" She laughs, like the concept's her cosmic idea of a joke. "Oh, there's the train. About time. They're always late around here."

A subway train screeches to a stop on the platform, right at my feet. I see people on it, shadowy black shapes without names or faces, and I shiver from the sudden cold that pours out of the open door. Mom pushes past me like I'm a hatstand and hops onto the train, grabbing a handrail and looking at me expectantly.

"Well, kid?" she asks pointedly. "You coming?"

I stare at her for a moment, all my weight on my left foot, hesitating, and my foot begins to move…

The station explodes and a blinding white flash goes in front of my eyes like heat lightning. Suddenly I'm alone, surrounded by silence. I give a small whimper at the shock, and then it fades into the darkness and the pain rips a scream out of my throat. Where did this come from, and why can't it fucking go back?

I feel somebody's fingers on my hand, which his pressed hard against the warm slow-flowing blood of my chest. "You are awake, Riff?" the voice comes through the darkness. "You are awake?"

I open my eyes, wrench them open really, and two faces swim into half-focus. Two dark-haired, dark-eyed faces bending over me, an expression I don't really know how to take on their faces. One is a very pretty Puerto Rican girl, appearing almost like a slightly pregnant angel. It makes me question whether I really am dead or not, because I know sure as sin there ain't gonna be any angels where I'm going. The next face I know well.

"Chino?" I gasp. Chino wouldn't look me up in heaven or hell, and as I see the billboard for Sweeney's Discount Tires on the edge of my vision I feel my heart sink. I came back. I'm here, under the highway, alive and in the world that I wrote off the same way it wrote me off. I don't know what to do about it. I don't know how to feel. I don't know how to deal with the fact that I'm terrified of not being in heaven or hell right now, that Earth is full of demons that even hell can't hold a candle to and I have no idea whose side I'm on. So I deal by not dealing. I feel by not feeling. Emptiness is easier by a mile than a head full of demons.

"We thought we had lost you," the girl says softly.

"Think you did, for a sec," I mutter through gritted teeth. "What are you…" She's started moving my hand away from the knife wound.

"We need to clean that and wrap it up, or you are going to bleed to death," Chino says gently, and he pushes three small pills into my hand. "Take these. For the pain."

So there is a God. The pills start working faster than I could have hoped, though admittedly my sense of time is a little screwed. Not that the pain goes away or anything, my body still feels limp and useless and every time I move I feel like some godly power is trying to destroy me, but I can see straight now. The situation dawns on me with the new clarity, and I look at the man kneeling over me as his girl rinses the blood and grime from my side with water from a bottle.

"I… I don't understand," I manage hesitantly as I try to sit up. "Why are you doing this? Why'd you save me?"

"Easy now, easy," Chino murmurs, but he recognizes how much I can't stand lying on the ground in front of him like this and helps me up, supporting me from the back. Gently he eases my shirt up past my ribs and hisses through his teeth as he sees the explosion of blood. I can't look at it, can't handle that now. As he talks, he wraps strips of an old tee-shirt around the worst of the damage. Never had Chino pegged for a Boy Scout…

"The world is not divided into good people and bad people, Riff. Jets and Sharks. There is a little of both in all of us. I am beginning to see this."

"Aah! Son of a bitch!" My voice comes out strangled as the bandage presses hard against the gash. Jesus Christ!

Chino winces in sympathy, but he doesn't apologize. He's doing what he's gotta do. "The Sharks are scared and hurt and confused, but there's been enough killing already tonight."

I hear the words but they make no sense, Chino makes no sense. "But the Jets killed Bernardo," I say obstinately. "They wanted revenge. They wanted…"

"No," Chino says sharply. "The Jets did not kill Bernardo. Pride killed Bernardo, pride and arrogance and hate and hope in all the wrong places, they have killed my best friend. And yours. And nearly you."

Nearly. Why nearly? I still don't understand. Of the three of us, even I wouldn't have picked me to live. I'm not sure how I earned the honor, but if it's a punishment it makes more sense. "He thought…" I say, and I have to take a deep breath before I can finish. "He thought I was dead. Tony wanted revenge, same as the Sharks. Exactly the same. He was trying to do it all for me, and it's because of me that he's dead. You should have let them kill me. It was my fault, this whole thing, the fight, everything. Not Tony. He…" The effect of it crashes over me and the pain of remembering takes my breath away, stabs me again and again and again. "He tried to call it all off. That was what he was trying to do, the whole time. He only came tonight because I asked him to. It's my fault he's dead." My fault. All of this. Two men dead, their bodies removed already, just me and their memories and this empty hole.

"You are a good man, Riff. I know this, and I think somewhere inside the Sharks know this," Chino says seriously. He pauses for a moment, then goes on thoughtfully, looking out over the stars. "They will never admit it, but you remind us of Bernardo. You both walked the same way, held yourselves the same way. You were both larger than normal men for some reason that no one could explain. We do not blame Bernardo or Tony. And we do not blame you."

I can tell him he's wrong, that I'm the most pathetic fucked-up kid to ever walk these streets and I deserve every inch of blame the universe could fling at me, that I deserve to be dead and five minutes ago I was dead and it's only because of some epic-scale cosmic screwup that I'm here talking to him right now. I could say all this and it would be the most honest sentence I've come up with in a long time. But I don't. I don't really know why. Maybe I so desperately want to believe him, even when I know I can't.

"No matter what my boys say about you, Chino, you're a better man than I'll ever be. I… Thanks," I say awkwardly. "Thanks for saving me. Both of you."

"Come with us," Chino's girl says softly, taking his hand. "Stay the night with us. The streets are not safe tonight."

I look at her, my expression set. "I know, and that's why I can't. My boys need me now. My girl needs me now. How can I let 'em think I'm… What would they do? I've seen what they'd do," I say, remembering the demon screams and bloodstained sidewalks of moments past. "Jets and Sharks, there ain't that much difference. Sharks needed you tonight, and my boys need me."

"Riff, do not be an idiot. You can barely stand!" Chino protests.

"Then I'll crawl," I tell him, my voice like steel. "This is what I gotta do. Help me up, I'm okay." He pulls me to my feet, and I swear quietly as the world pulls a triple pirouette, but the important thing is that I didn't fall. "Chino?" I say quietly after a pause.

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry," I murmur. Can't meet his eyes. "It was never supposed to be like this."

Chino gives a harsh laugh. "Aren't we all, Riff. Aren't we all."

And in seconds, they're both gone. Ghosts fading into darkness. Seems like that's the way all people that matter go out. Only the ones you wish you'd never see again go out in a blaze.

* * *

Okay, Riff. One foot in front of the other. That's all. I don't care how fucked up you are, you can always put one foot in front of the other, one more time. That runs through my head like a mantra, and it's the only thing that keeps me going through the darkness, broken up only every once in a while by the gold-orange circles from the streetlights. The drunken thought that they're police headlights drifts through my head and sticks there, that I'm going to get tackled and shot down on the spot if I'm seen in the light, and I skirt their edges as best I can. I never take my eyes off the lighted window way the hell off in the distance, the tiny square growing bigger by the second that I know is Doc's place. I gotta get there, I know that's where they'd go. I mean, where else? Home? First place the cops would look, last place on any of our minds. The streets? They'd last three seconds now that all bets are off. No, they're at Doc's, and I gotta get to 'em, gotta have them find Graziella for me, gotta…

Gotta a lot of things. I'm limping something fierce from a weird fall I musta taken and I still keep one arm pressed hard against my side, maybe to keep my insides from making a break for it, I don't know what the idea is, but I'm making progress. Enough progress to hear words drifting through the door as I try to make it up the three stairs without blacking out. Words, voices I know well, tones I know better after tonight.

"Dance for us, _senora_!"

"_Por favore_?"

"_Arriba_!"

Cat-calls, whistles, angry vicious laughter. My mind flashes back to the lot under the highway as I listen, an angry torrent of Spanish and a Shark girl toying with me as I lay dying…

"Get your filthy hands off of me!"

A woman's scream snaps me back to here and now. Oh no. No, they're not, they wouldn't… On some superhuman strength I stumble up the stairs and throw the door open. It crashes into the wall, and the noise stops all movement and voices inside.

"What the hell's going on here?" I roar. The Jets freeze and stare at me with huge eyes. Yeah, Action, the ghost's back. Step off. Nine boys circle something on the floor, something making quiet, frightened noises, _someone_, I realize with disgust. The door bangs shut behind me as I limp into the room, the boys splitting like the Red Sea as I come towards them.

Oh, Christ. Anita.

"Ten minutes!" I shout. The boys back away even farther. Half can't stop staring at me, the other half can't meet my eyes. "Ten minutes I turn my back on you, ain't you big enough to handle that? Can't I… can't I even get stabbed in peace, can I never leave you alone without you doing shit like, like, like _raping a damn girl, is that it?_"

My voice breaks over the last words, and silence follows them. In the buzzing disbelief, I extend a hand to Anita, a strangely steady hand. She stares at it a minute like she expects me to slap her, and I see her dark-eyed expression flash back at me in the gray-green shade of memory. Shame. Confusion. Hatred. How could we not have seen it before? And why do I have to see it now? Anita sweeps to her feet on her own with a haughty look, facing me down like it's seconds before we're about to duel, and with a snarl she spits at my feet. Action starts to say something, but before the phrase "Goddamn spic," is more than halfway out of his mouth I've cut him off with a death glare and a biting "Fuck off."

"You think you are high and holy now?" she demands. "Saint Riff and the prodigal Jets? Fifteen seconds of humanity you have shown me, but Bernardo is still dead! How did he not finish you? I thought you were dead in the street and my love had had his revenge. Only tell me where it is I can find Tony and I will be gone, and you all can go on your way to hell."

Have I been stabbed again? I deserve everything she's saying, I deserve so much more than that, but I can't think of anyone who deserves to have to tell this kind of news about their best friend. "I… I don't know how to put this, Anita, but Tony ain't in the position to be taking messages no more," I manage.

She looks like all her worst fears are confirmed, but I don't understand why. "She told me Tony should have been back by now, but to… to have him dead? It cannot… it was supposed to be you," she whispers, looking at me like the walking damned.

"I know that," I answer. "Not a second's gone by that I don't know that. Tony didn't deserve this. And neither do you. Go home, senora. There's been enough blood on the streets tonight."

"Whose fault is that?" she hisses. She spits again at my feet and sweeps out the door into the night without another word or a look back. I couldn't have expected any more than that. That doesn't mean I wasn't hoping for it.

A tiny groan escapes me, and I collapse at the nearest table in the drugstore, first leaning against it, then giving up and lying flat on the tabletop. Jesus, it hurts too much to even stand up. The Jets surround me in seconds, crowding me, I can barely breathe and they're too many, too close…

"Riff, don't scare us like that, daddy-o!" Big Deal breathed. "You okay? Here, lemme see…" He reaches for the spot where the blood still stains my shirt darker by the second. I twist away, gritting my teeth to keep from screaming at the movement.

"Don't… touch… me," I snarl, and he jumps back. "Any of you fuckers who touched her, get away from me!" They jump back, silent, wide-eyed, and I'm choking on anger as I watch them innocently trying to figure out what they did wrong. All but one.

"Riff," Baby John whispers, pleading. He takes my hand and helps me to sit up slowly. "Riff, I never… I swear I didn't…"

"Yeah," I breathe. "I didn't think you would."

Why do I feel worse now than I did before I stopped this? Fighting, knives, rape, beatings, death, it was never supposed to come to this. More than that, I was never supposed to care if it did. We knew what kind of odds we were running when I and Tony started the Jets. We knew, that's just the way it is when you walk tall, everyone wants to bring you down to bring themselves up. It didn't matter, it was all supposed to be worth it. Worth what? All I want is to curl up in a corner of Doc's Drugstore and die. Ashamed is a bullshit term. I'm disgusted with myself.

And for the second time in not nearly long enough, I am in the present and yet I'm somewhere else completely. The scene around me blurs around the edges and fades into another street, one I know better than I wish I did. A run-down, drug-dealing, gun-slinging street on the west side. A thirteen-year-old kid, skinny as a cigarette and as healthy. Goddamn, why this now? I'd do anything to get rid of memory. It would make this so much easier to take, to just shut my mind off and pretend like nothing had changed, to turn my back on the past, on me, on the world, just like the world's turned its back on me. But I can't. I keep picturing this kid, his torn and bloody shirt, his black eye, his limp. It's amazing he's getting anywhere, but he's covering serious ground. Me. Four and a half years ago it's me, running to the street from my uncle, running from a man who killed my sister and a police system that let it go to a street that would kill my best friend and a world that would destroy me for it.

I remember that day pretty damn well. It's hard not to. I told myself it would be better out here. I'd live like the neighborhood kids thought the real tough cats lived. I'd make someone else fear me, for a change. But look at where I was. Was it better than where I came from, or that much worse? Was it better to be killed in the street in the dark, or to be the only one to survive to have the blindfold ripped off to see the twisted light?

I don't know what to think anymore.

In my defense, I try not to. I tell Baby John that I need to see Graziella, and in a second Mouth Piece ducks out the door and runs down the street to find her. He'll take any excuse to escape, and if he thinks I'm too out of it to see that then he doesn't know me as well as he thinks he does. What he doesn't know is that I genuinely don't give a damn. I feel like I've aged a hundred years in the last two hours. I don't even feel like I'm me anymore.

Come on, Em. I know you can't take me with you, but can't you at least show me where to go now?

* * *

I couldn't do it. I couldn't kill Riff. I just couldn't. Jeez, I'm so in love with that boy that it's corrupting my sense of literary accuracy...


	11. Anita: Candlelight

**Disclaimer**: And we return you to your previously scheduled program of owning absolutely nothing.

**A/N:** However, for a change of pace, we return you to your hardly ever scheduled program of updating twice within a week or two. I know, I know, such productivity is unexpected. But we're on chapter eleven out of fourteen, so I figured I may as well give it that final push towards the end. This is totally going to happen! Even though I started posting this story what, four years ago? I'm going to finish it!

* * *

**Chapter Eleven:**

**Anita:**

**Candlelight  
**

_She said it makes her feel unsteady,  
__Without a God to blame  
_Thriving Ivory, Hey Lady

_Blow the candles out, looks like a solo tonight  
__I'm beginning to see the light  
__Blow the candles out, looks like a solo tonight  
__But I think I'll be all right  
_Hey Monday, Candles

Revenge is a strange thing. You always suppose yourself to be above all of that. Not you, roaming the streets with a pistol looking for the one person whose death could ever bring you peace. Oh, no. Not you, with your emotions carved in stone, rock-solid and unchanging, you would be far too reasonable for that. But there is a wild animal lurking in all of us, that savage native with a spear dancing behind our eyes that is capable of anything at the moment when our masks are shattered. The savage hits you when it shouldn't. You need to forgive, you want to, you pretend to, but the monster consumes everything else until you snap and do something you would regret were the target anybody else.

When you are pushed, you snap faster and harder.

I explode out of the store and into the street. The night hangs thick and heavy around me, each breath strangling me with the smell and taste of blood. Riff's words stick in my head in an endless circle. "There's been enough blood on these streets tonight." Not yet, Jet-boy. Not yet by half. You killed Bernardo, the only thing I had left to live for. You have torn my life and my world apart, not to speak of what you have just done to me. Do not think I will forget that. No matter how holy you pretend to be, no matter how much you pretend to care, I will never forget.

Fate has a strange way of arranging things. I walk with no control over my body, around one corner and the next in a direction the complete opposite of home. It does not take me long before I find the man I was prepared to search all night for. The weaselly, suspicious man my Nardo knew too well: Lieutenant Schrank. I had never thought I would be happy to see him, but it is not an ordinary happiness. The feeling has teeth and claws and frightens me at the same time it thrills.

"Senora, what..." he begins, seeing the serpent glint in m eyes. I think I see him recoil, take a nervous step back from the madness that has taken over my life.

"I have found him," I say, my words holding a snarl I had not expected.

Schrank has made a guess as to whom I mean and obviously is hoping desperately that he is right. "Who?" he asks eagerly.

"The one who killed Bernardo," I answer, feeling the familiar blow in my stomach whenever I say those words, give them life, make them real. "The one who has destroyed my life. Who else, Lieutenant? Is that enough reason for you to arrest him?"

"Senora, when have I ever needed a reason?" Schrank grins with enthusiasm that makes me sick. "But that's as good a one as I've ever heard. Lead the way, and I'll make damn sure it's worth your while."

Without another word I turn and nearly run back the way I'd come through the unknown side streets. My heart was on fire. Too much emotion and not enough time. So much had fallen apart tonight. Maria. Me. Everything. Pain, loss, death, hurt, hate. All I want is justice. No man has ever hurt me without my making him hurt the same and worse, it is how I survive. I will have justice.

Voices drift through the window of Doc's Drugstore as we stand on the front steps, the shadows we must throw on the floor completely ignored.

"Who fixed you up like this, daddy-o?" Big Deal asks. I know all their names now, have all their faces imprinted on my memory. I will remember all their voices forever.

"Didn't I tell you not to touch it? Goddamn!" Riff hisses in obvious pain. "It was Chino."

"The... the fucking spic?" Action stammers.

"Jesus, would you shut your mouth for five minutes until you start saying something you think about first?" Riff shouts. His anger nearly blows the door down, his own human savage buried not quite so deep beneath the surface. Schrank looks at me inquiringly, and I nod without a word. Yes, these are the ones.

"I'm sorry for your loss, really, I am," he says under his breath. "If I look like I'm havin' fun, know I'm still doin' it for you. It's just I've been waiting for this for years."

I do not care whom he does it for, though a little bit of sympathy on his part might not be unwelcome. So long as the thing is done. And I let Schrank precede me into the store, slipping noiselessly in through the door before it banged shut behind him. All the voices in the shot died instantly at the noise, and every single head turned to face us. A surge of angry pleasure rose up in me as all the color drained from their faces. Look who has control now, boys. Let's watch you dance now, hmm? Arriba.

My eyes go straight to Riff, seated on top of one of Doc's tables. There is a flash in his eyes as he sees the two of us, with an emotion I cannot label. It falls somewhere between fear, shame, and anger. The flash lasts only for a moment, before it vanishes and is not replaced with anything. Riff's light eyes have become like granite: hard, cold, and impenetrable. God only knows what thoughts are passing in his mind. God only cares.

"Evening, Lieutenant Schrank," he says softly, standing up with a grimace and taking a few steps toward us. I shudder and draw back, my jaw set. Don't come near me. I recoil from his presence like he is a monster.

Schrank, on the other hand, steps forward to meet him. "Don't give me any of that shit, boy," he snarls, so close to Riff that their noses almost touch, so close I see the officer's breath stir the boy's hair into motion. "Do you understand what happened tonight? Well, do you?" he roars when the boy makes no answer.

"Yeah," Riff says, his marble expression not chipping. "Yeah, I understand."

"Don't you ever think?" Schrank continues as if he had not spoken. "You think life is a game and you're too much of a tough guy to play by the rules, that you can do whatever you want and nothing's gonna go wrong? Newsflash, Peter Pan, it's five years past time to grow up. And now we've got this big mess on our hands."

The Jets watch Riff with wide, terrified eyes, waiting for him to say something, to do something, waiting for something to happen. But Riff does not seem to understand that all eyes are on him. He is not looking at Schrank. He is looking in his direction, but through the transparent limbs of the Manhattan police force at something entirely different, something none of us can see but all of us could identify if asked. Or maybe we would all identify it differently, I cannot pretend to know. Riff is not going to say. The only thing he has said is "I understand," and even that sounded like the words of a dead man.

Schrank's eyes narrow- this is not going as he pictured. "Well? Aren't you going to say something?" he demands. The defiant silence hangs for another moment, and then the officer becomes something I have never seen, a hungry animal, fangs and claws and amber-yellow eyes. The animal-man's hands curl into fists, and before we understand anything Riff has crumpled to the ground with a short, weak yelp, breathing hard, the officer's knuckles stained red. Two bys start forward, rushing to him, but at a look from Schrank they freeze. None of the others can move, and I certainly cannot either. We can do nothing but watch this god, this savior, this general, this bleeding and broken teenage boy doubled over on the dirty floor of Doc's Drugstore, breathing raggedly and clutching his side.

I feel a gag reflex rising in my throat, but I quickly push it away. This is what I wanted, is it not? This is what I wanted.

"Hope you'll like it where you're headed, Riff," Schrank sneered, looming over him. "Hell, jail might even be a step up from the kind of company you're keeping. I mean, you'd have to bathe and everything, which would take some getting used to... Oh, but you know, you're a minor still," he said nastily. "Which means we'd have to look up your legal guardian and get him in on the proceedings."

Riff's uneven breathing suddenly stopped, and he looked up at the officer with his marble eyes in a pile of gravel. There was nothing but horror there. Those eyes were screaming in horror. "No," he whispered, "no, please..."

"Miss your uncle, do you, Riff?" My stomach turned at Schrank's words. My heart was beating so fast it almost felt like it was vibrating, and I was sure I was going to be sick. This was what I wanted...

"Bet you got a lot of catching up to do. Come with me to the station. We're going to look him up in the morning."

This was not what I wanted.

'No!"

My voice echoed loud and awkward around the shop, and now everyone was staring at me. Riff looked at me with the eyes of a dying man, not daring to hope. "It was not him. It was Tony. I was mistaken." He had killed my Bernardo. He was the reason that my life was over. He deserved everything I could possibly do and more. This is what reason told me. This is what justice demanded. But my heart screamed this was not going to bring Nardo back. This would not bring me back to his morning and let us reconcile after our fight like we always had. This was going to kill Riff. And I had had enough of death.

Schrank's eyes turned to me, loaded to the top with disgust. "Oh sure, and now all of a sudden you're best friends? Too late to change your mind now, princess. What's done is done, but not half of what's gonna be done once I follow through with this. Get up, Riff," he snarled. I felt my blood racing through my body as my heart pumped faster and faster, anger and fear fighting one another for domination. Why was I feeling this for the boy I hated? Why this sudden pity, and why now?

Maybe because I had thought, if only for a second, I saw the black eyes of my Bernardo looking out from the Jet boy's face. It did not make sense, and I did not pretend to be close to understanding it. One thing I understood for certain, as Riff closed his (Nardo's?) eyes and stood precariously, was that this was wrong, all wrong, horribly wrong. What was there possibly for me to do?

"Don't you dare."

The voice coming in through the door was a familiar one, and I turned in disbelief to see two girls storm into the drugstore. One was Riff's girlfriend, that much was obvious by the length of her skirt and the trails of mascara coursing down her face, made even worse as she burst into silent tears at the sight of him. The other girl we all knew instantly as well. But what was that angry tagalong dressed in jeans and a tee-shirt supposed to do when I, who had loved Bernardo like none other, could do nothing?

"Anybodys, what the hell..." Action hissed in disbelief.

But Schrank had turned a strange mix of white and green at the same time, as he attempted to call back his ruthless amber eyes and stare Anybodys with the venom she gave to him. "I'm doin' what I gotta do, Alison," Schrank said in a tight, cold voice.

Graziella was the only one who did not give a pronounced start at this. Her name was Alison? Schrank knew that?

"Yeah? You gotta arrest him? And why is that again? 'Cause you can't rest until you lock up every kid on the streets? You're gonna have your work cut out for you. Think you can pick someone who deserves it to start with?" Anybodys fired back with a defiant confidence that stunned me.

"You don't... you don't understand what they did tonight, do you?" he managed, gesturing at Riff. The boy was staring at Anybodys as if he had never seen anything like her before.

Anybodys laughed bitterly. "I got news for you, daddy, I know exactly what happened tonight." Riff choked on a mouthful of air. Even I did a double-take. She was his daughter? The dynamic instantly made more sense, though the irony would have been funny in any situation but this one. Anybodys cringed, obviously feeling the torrent of questions about to attack her, but she kept talking like nothing was different. "I know what happened, 'cause I was there. I watched the whole thing. I egged 'em on, same as Riff did. I didn't kill nobody, but neither did Riff. So if you still want to arrest him, you're gonna have to take us all. All the Jets, plus me."

Riff reached out and took Anybodys' hand, pulling her over to stand next to him and face down the officer side-by-side. "So all the Jets, she means," he said in a quiet but powerful voice.

Schrank and Anybodys both gasped, and Riff nodded slightly. I saw her knuckles whiten for a moment as she squeezed his hand in thanks. "Go home, dad," she said coldly. "You don't need to worry about us tonight anymore."

Schrank looked from Riff to his daughter, who had still not released his hand, and I thought he was going to be sick. Without a word, he reached into his jacket pocket and removed his badge. Fighting a losing battle to keep his face blank, he threw the badge to the ground at his daughter's feet. The door slammed shut behind him.

For a moment none of us knew exactly what we were supposed to say, and the silence stretched damningly in front of us. Graziella walked over to Riff on steps like a ghost, and Anybodys silently slipped over to stand next to me in the corner, in the shadows where we were not sure we belonged.

"Riff, I thought you were..." Graziella began, but she couldn't bring herself to say the word.

"Not yet, baby," he said softly. "Not yet."

She flung her arms around him and buried her face in his shoulder, and he held her close to him, determined that nothing would bring them apart again. "You owe me a night still," she managed after a moment. "I wouldn't let you go without that."

A sob leaped from my throat on its own, and I could not control it even when every person present turned to look at me. Bernardo owed me a night. He always did, when we fought like we had. The only value of our fights was the passion with which we made up. And now I would never have that. I would never hold him in my arms again, never hear his voice saying my name. My Bernardo, his quick wit and fierce pride, his fanatical devotion to Maria and, under many layers, to me, I would never find him alive and surrounded by his boys as Graziella had done. At least for one of us there had been a happy ending.

The Jets wanted to say something, I could see that, but none of them knew what. As if it would matter. As if it would change anything. "Anita, we never..." one began, but I shook my head and he stopped.

"Please, do not apologize," I said, and my voice broke but I pretended not to notice. "I know. And I hope that you know also." And no matter how hard I tried, I could not meet their eyes.

Riff sank to the floor, leaning against Doc's counter to keep him upright. He was pale and his hands had been shaking for ten minutes, but his expression was acutely present. Graziella sat on the floor next to him and I, without knowing why, crossed and sat on his other side. The Jets, like on some wordless cue, came and sat also until we had formed a silent circle in the middle of Doc's Drugstore. Anybodys disappeared for a moment, then returned from the back room holding two candlesticks, which she lit and placed in the center of our circle. This felt so right, so perfect. I could look at the Jets again through the dancing shadows of the holy candlelight.

As the stars traced their paths through the night sky outside, the Jets silently took one another's hands They all had lowered heads; the candles were indescribably difficult to look at, more so than the sun I looked at Riff, and he looked back at me for a moment.

And then I saw them again, those black eyes that looked straight through me. I extended my hand, and with a sad smile he took it.

In a halting voice, Anybodys began to speak, in words taken from all our hearts. "Hail Mary, full of grace, Our Lord is with you."

"Blessed are you, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus," Baby John picked up, his voice high still and so alone.

"Holy Mary, Mother of God," Riff began hoarsely, and the words rang clear through the perfect silence as he gazed into the heart of the candle, "pray for us sinners, now and in the hour of our deaths."

I heard voices in the crackling flame, saw faces in every shadow. I thought of the stars outside the window. I wondered if, had I ever thought to count the stars, if I would find one more in the heavens watching over me tonight. _Te adoro,_ _Bernardo. Para siempre._ My voice broke over the only word I could think to say.

"Amen."


	12. Anita & Riff: Blurred Focus

**Disclaimer:** I got nothing. Bonus points for the reader who can find the _Fiddler on the Roof _reference that I threw in here (and also do not own) though...

**A/N:** This chapter was especially difficult for me to write, not because of the subject matter so much as just the formatting. I've been copying and pasting paragraphs and moving them all over the place just trying to get this to read without any awkward pauses or jumps, and this is the best I can come up with. While you're reading this, keep in mind it plays out like a movie in my head, with random scene jumps every five or six seconds flipping between the two stories.

* * *

**Chapter Twelve:**

**Anita/ Riff:**

**Blurred Focus  
**

_Dreaming, I was only dreaming_

_Of another place and time where my family's from_

_Singing, I can hear them singing_

_When the rain, it washed away all these scattered dreams_

_Dying, everyone's reminding_

_Hard to wash the misery drenched in gasoline_

_Laughter, there is no more laughter_

_Songs of yesterday now live in the underground_

Green Day, Before the Lobotomy

"Do you see it, Anita?"

She stood eagerly on her tiptoes, craning her neck to see over the crowd of people that had rushed to the ship's railing. At barely over five feet tall, Anita knew that the exercise was hopeless; still, she _felt_ like she could see it.

"There, just there, behind the man in the hat. Can you see it now? Oh, Anita, she is so beautiful!" Anita gave up trying to see over the man in the hat, who easily topped six feet, and took Bernardo's hand instead, watching his face as Staten Island grew closer and closer. The salt-laced air rushing at them from across the Atlantic had given him a youthful vitality that she could not remember from their days in Puerto Rico. His black eyes sparkled with the thrill of anticipation, a fire of hope dancing within their depths, and the ocean breeze played gently with his hair, teasing it into flowing and rippling easily.

"Oh yes, so beautiful," she responded with a laugh. "As beautiful as me? If I were made out of metal?"

Bernardo held her hand tightly, still gazing dreamily at the horizon. "Were you her model, and you did not tell me?" he laughed. "Si, my own Lady Liberty. Are you not happy we came now?"

What was she supposed to say? She still felt a chill of fear in her heart, a chill she could not explain. Was the worst of this journey not over? She had been passionately seasick for the past two days, not entirely because of the storm that had tossed the waters into a frenzy for the better part of the trip and kept them trapped below the deck for their own protection. Every day she had had to stop herself from looking over her shoulder for soldiers with bullets aiming at her back. They were here now, and their new life was waiting for them somewhere beyond the shadowed facade of the buildings. And Bernardo was here, holding her hand, a smile of childlike wonder on the face she loved so well. Was this not better than she could have hoped?

"Yes," she said simply, moving closer to him, "I am very happy."

"Can you believe we are actually here? Here in America? We can do anything here!" Bernardo gave a laugh and swept Anita up in his arms, twirling in a circle as her surprised laughter joined his. "Go anywhere we like, become anything we wish, do what we want to do when we want to simply because we want it!"

"Nardo, people are staring!" Anita protested, though the smile on her face betrayed the fact that she didn't care any more than Bernardo did.

"So? Let them stare," he laughed. "In America people can stare at me as much as they like, because none of them can understand the feeling of having everything in the world."

"Everything?" Anita laughed. "I know we are in New York now, but please do not get carried away."

"No, everything," Bernardo assured her, a wicked smile crossing his face. "This is mine," he said, gesturing in the direction of New York; though Anita still could not see over the heads of the other passengers on the boat, it was obvious he could, "and this is mine," gesturing at the jacket he had purchased with the last five dollars from his last paycheck to combat the northern chill, "and this is mine," taking Anita by both her hands and turning her to face him, "and this is mine," he whispered and kissed her softly on the lips.

Anita felt a paralyzing shock of electricity shoot through her body, and she shivered as she moved into his kiss and returned the embrace.

"So yes, Anita," he murmured, "I have everything in the world."

She did not know what to say. Fortunately, she didn't have to say anything. Anita never let go of his hand as she turned back in the direction the boat was heading, and she gasped in breathless shock as she saw it. There she was, the herald of their new life, looming up out of the chilly grey waters with her torch held aloft, a knowing twinkle in her tarnished eyes as she looked at the two lovers, her robes eternally billowing in a warm San Juan breeze.

"Oh!" she breathed.

"Beautiful, no?" Bernardo murmured, wrapping his arms around her from behind.

"Si," Anita breathed. "Beautiful."

* * *

"Did you see the look on his face, the little punk? Priceless!" Tony roared with laughter as he and Riff slapped a hi-five.

"Like he'd never seen a kid walk tall like a man before?" Riff grinned, thinking fondly of the wayward Emerald they had just sent fleeing down the street just by walking into Doc's Drugstore side by side with their hands in their pockets. It was nice to cut an image like that, and though it wasn't easy to pull it off the perks were undeniable. "I tell you, buddy-boy, if the rest of them Emeralds got as much guts as that one, we ain't even gonna have to rumble with 'em!"

"Just take a picture of your face and mail it to Tomcat's house, you'll scare them so good they won't even show up," Tony suggested with a grin, before Riff pounced like a hunting puma and tackled his friend to the ground. Though much smaller, Riff had the element of surprise on his side and he had Tony's arm twisted up behind his back in seconds.

"All right, all right! I give!" Tony yelped, and Riff hopped back up to his feet with a brilliant smile.

"And let that be a lesson unto you, Tony-boy," he said sagely. "I might be small, but I pack a lot of power in this little body. Or so your ma says, anyway..." He danced out of reach of Tony's right hook, a light of amusement dancing in his eyes.

"You say anything like that around her Riff, and I swear we'll kick you right back out on the street, so help me God," Tony threatened, but there was no real malice in it and Riff knew the fact well. It completely blew his mind at times, that unconditional help and welcome, though he knew he wasn't exactly the ideal friend for Tony to have in his mother's eyes. Hearing about acceptance like this, Riff would ordinarily have dismissed it as the stuff of fairy tales; living it, he would occasionally wake up on Tony's couch and wonder if he was still dreaming. Even the nightmares of his uncle were beginning to fade.

The two boys reached the apartment building, and Tony leaped up the stairs two at a time, leaving Riff to watch him skeptically and follow at a more leisurely pace. "House on fire, buddy-boy?" he asked wryly.

Tony grinned sheepishly. "I was supposed to be home for dinner a half-hour ago," he explained.

Riff shook his head in rueful amusement and followed Tony up the stairs to the third floor, hands in his pockets. A magical smell was drifting out of Tony's apartment, and Riff inhaled deeply with a contented smile, his eyes closed. This was what it felt like to be in power, to be one of the two people in this city that were looked up to, that mattered. This must be what it felt like, he thought, still hovering on the landing, half a step away from the doorway, to have a home.

* * *

Dark clouds rolled across the horizon, grey horsemen of the underworld bringing waves that crashed over the side of the boat, sending lightning crackling across the sky and thunder crashing with a deafening roar through the rain-soaked air. Anita clutched at Bernardo's arm as the rain soaked her to the bone and he held her closely, promising he would never, ever let her go.

The smell was one that Riff knew intimately. A charred, woody smell. The air itself seemed heavier, thicker, spiked with something that tore at the inside of his lungs like sandpaper. The smell of fire.

"Tony?" he said breathlessly, reaching for the doorhandle.

* * *

A giant slate-grey wave towered over them, a giant wall of water that crashed over the side, adn Anita felt Bernardo's hand slipping through her fingers, ripped away by the cold rushing sea, and as a white-hot flash of lightning set the sky on fire she lost touch of his hand and felt him torn away into the night...

* * *

A solid wave of flame met Riff as he ripped the door open, the heat pounded through his body and set him coughing, hardly able to see the black human shape in the center of the room, arms flung back in the agony of crucifixion as Tony sank to the floor, consumed in flames...

* * *

"NO!"

An agonized scream echoed with ghostly resonance through the small apartment, through the back room of Doc's Drugstore. Two young women who had not truly slept in nights stood up quickly and ran to the other side of the room, sitting on the edge of the bed or mattress on the floor and shaking urgently the person sleeping there curled in a tight ball, arms shielding the head to protect from pain, the screams cut off with a ragged gasp as they jerked awake with frightful suddenness.

"Anita, please," Maria whispered, a stony mask of emotionless solidarity on her face, "do not be afraid. I am here."

"It was just a dream, Riff," Graziella murmured in a low, soothing voice. "Just a dream. You're safe. It's okay."

But which part of being awake was okay?

Anita and Riff closed their eyes, shivering with a cold sweat. Graziella let Riff collapse into her arms and held him close as his thin shoulders shook with silent sobs, as she stroked his brown-blond hair and felt his heart racing into a ceaseless vibration against her skin. Anita and Maria embraced in the dark of her bedroom as the statue of the Virgin Mary watched them with outstretched arms, Anita choking back tears as Maria whispered "Do not be afraid," like a mantra, paying no heed to the silent tears streaming down her own cheeks.

It had been one week since the night under the highway that had burned with hellfire. Tony and Bernardo's funeral was the next day. Both of them had woken with a scream every night.

The dreams would not have been so painful if they weren't so real, would not have been so tragic if they had not started with such grace. All they wanted now was to hit the bottom before they woke.

* * *

Sorry it's so short, it's really more of a transition than anything, though I like the imagery... One more chapter and an epilogue to go, and then we'll have done this thing!


	13. Pieces Left Behind

**Disclaimer: **I own ideas and situations only, not characters or plots. Sad, but I do what I can with what I have.

**A/N: **Well, here we are, one chapter from the end! We're going to do this. Thanks for sticking with me. If this chapter seems ridiculous to you, or if you like it, either way please let me know. I'm having mixed feelings about it. On the plus side, I'm putting up the epilogue potentially tomorrow, if not later tonight. How's that for closure?

* * *

**Chapter Thirteen:**

**Pieces Left Behind**

_My best friend took a week's vacation to forget her,_

_His girl took a week's worth of Valium and slept_

_And now he's guilt-stricken, sobbing with his head on the floor_

_Thinks about her now and how he never really wept, he'd say it._

_Can't be held responsible. She was touching her face._

_I won't be held responsible. She fell in love in the first place._

_For the life of me, I cannot remember_

_What made us think that we were wise and we'd never compromise._

_For the life of me, I could not believe we'd ever die for these sins_

_We were merely freshmen._

The Verve Pipe, The Freshmen

The part he remembered most vividly about the day was the emptiness, but he could never exactly find the words to express that feeling to anybody. After all, it was a joint funeral, and St. Mary's chapel had been reduced to standing-room only in the space of seconds. Amid the bilingual service and excess of flowers that rendered the air as choking and heavy as the perfume counter in a department store, there had been people who stood up and spoke: a social worker with a badly disguised agenda, some of Tony's relatives, Bernardo's neighbor. Plenty more had turned up with nothing to say, nothing much to add to the atmosphere except for the occasional muffled sob or somber look. It was a beautiful service, there was no denying that. But something about it made Chino uncomfortable. He felt like he had been caught in a lie but had to persist with it, had to see it through.

The Spanish-speaking priest led half the congregation in prayer, the English-speaking priest the other half, and as the people around him bowed their heads, Chino looked up, catching the light from the stained-glass window on the planes of his face. He saw the tears streaming down the faces of the mourners, the Sharks, the Jets, Tony's family, Bernardo's parents. He watched this and wondered, instead of praying, why his eyes were still dry. His best friend was dead. Why was he so empty? Why did he feel nothing? What did that mean about him? About all of this?

Guided by some unknown impulse, Chino turned to the other half of the church across the aisle. The mourners were still largely, mildly ironically, separated by cultural barriers along the center aisle of the church, which meant that Chino didn't know most of the people not seated immediately around him. That was not to say that he didn't know any. A haunted-eyed boy sat in the back row, green-grey eyes looking at something above the head of the priest, eyes drawing an invisible sight line to something marginally involved with the service. Chino followed the line and fell upon a panel of the stained-glass, a rich dreamy-blue pane surrounded by a violent red on one side and a yellow-gold on the other The melee of colors pouring through he window from the sun outside fell in shafts up on the alter, on the hands of the priest, on Riff and Chino's upturned faces. The longer he looked at it, the more Chino started to think the blue pane was in the shape of a giant cosmic eye, watching him and staring through him to the heart, condemning him for not feeling what he was supposed to be feeling, and when, and surrounded by whom.

Unable to met the eye for more than a the space of seconds, Chino turned away, only to see that Riff was now looking at him as intently and unintentionally as he was looking at Riff. With a jerk of his head, he extended the unspoken invitation: _let's beat it, Chino, my man. Let's blow this joint._ Grasping at the chance, he stood up and walked without a word out the door of the church, Riff moments behind.

Nobody looked up to see them go. Prayer had consumed their infinite attention, and even the sound of the door closing behind the two boys did not disturb them.

Outside, the sky was painted a cold granite grey, clouds biding their time before an upcoming rainstorm. There could be no question that today was the first day of September; there had been an unmistakable shift in the air, and the glowing, stagnant warmth of summer had been replaced with this dull, cold, clean slate. Riff let out a small groan and arched his back in a stretch, though the expression in his eyes did not change. He looked profoundly uncomfortable in his jacket and tie, Chino saw. He didn't know they were the same ones Riff had worn to the dance at the gym nine days before, but Riff knew it and knew it well.

"You wanna take a walk or something, Chino?" he asked, his voice horse from disuse. Apparently he hadn't been partaking in the excess of hymn-singing any more than Chino had. "I can't go back in that church. It don't feel right."

"I know what you mean," Chino said softly. "Are you going to be all right?" It was the right question, and he knew it. Obviously he wasn't all right now, it would have been blind to the point of foolishness, asking that. But someday?

"Hell yeah," Riff waved a hand dismissively. "It's just a limp. I'm tougher than that. Think after sitting through an hour of people crying and talking about... well, after that, I can put some weight on a bum leg." That wasn't quite what Chino meant. But then, in a sense, Riff had sort of answered the question. Plus, there was the fact to consider that the farther away they got from the sin against nature that was taking place in St. Mary's church right then, the better they both would be.

Chino and Riff walked slowly behind the church, hands in their pockets and Riff obviously favoring his left leg, both looking off at the treeline in the distance, hazy and indistinct beyond the dots of gravestones in the fading grass. They walked in silence for several minutes, not from awkwardness but because there was simply nothing to be said. It was over. It was done. No group songs or Hail Marys were going to change anything. It was nice, in a way, to find someone who saw that. Maybe "nice" wasn't the right word, but it would take someone with a more superficial understanding of the situation to find what word was right. It wasn't a feeling that could be properly expressed in words.

"I'm glad they decided to do this outta the city," Riff said after a while, fishing a cigarette out of his pocket and lighting it. He offered one to Chino, who wordlessly shook his head in polite declination. The smoke escaped from his mouth in a wispy cloud, like it was the middle of January and he could see his breath hanging before him in the grey sky. "Tony woulda loved this, all this space. He hated being fenced in. Wanted to stretch out and see the sky. Me, I didn't mind it. The closeness and all the people, it let me, I don't know, reinvent myself. Made me feel safe," he finished, bitterly taking a long drag on the cigarette with closed eyes.

"We are always safe when we can hide," Chino said, thinking aloud just as Riff was. "That is why I could not stay inside any more. All they are doing in there is hiding, trying to make the truth look better by covering it in flowers and burying it in sad songs. It is all for our safety now. Still, we are making it about us. Bernardo would hate all that dishonesty. Nobody who speaks about him or cries over him has any idea who he was, who he could have been. He is a name to them. An idea. Not a man. All the false tears, they disgust me. It is..."

Neither Chino nor Riff knew the word for "sacrilege" in English, but they both felt the connotation in every overblown, insincere movement and word of the funeral. Both felt like outsiders, watching a ritual designed to give the rest of the world closure and comfort.

"I still do not feel anything," Chino blurted, completely unsure of why he did so.

"I don't think I'm doing this funeral shit right," said Riff in unison.

They looked at each other, and Chino smiled as Riff laughed once.

"It's like, my best friend is dead. Tony was like a brother to me. Why..." he began.

"Why am I not crying? Why am I not feeling what I am supposed to feel?" Chino finished for him. Riff nodded. "I have not felt anything since I watched Bernardo die," Chino went on. "Yes, in the moment, I felt like I was the one stabbed, but ever since? My heart has been only... empty. I do not think I have accepted it yet."

They stopped walking at a tombstone with the marble sculpture of an angel resting atop it. Her face had been weathered away by wind and rain until only a featureless orb with flowing hair remained to give blind testament to the deceased. Her feathery wings spread to catch the wind, her knees were molded into the gravestone as one seamless piece, anchored to the marker of a man whose name had faded away with the passage of time. Riff traced the angel's wing with two fingers and a sigh.

"I don't know if I can," he said softly. "Because that mean's he's never coming back, and then that means I have to come to terms with how much of this is my fault."

His voice broke and Chino laid one hand on his shoulder. "None of this was ever supposed to happen," he said, unsure of who he was supposed to be convincing, himself, Riff, or God. "I do not know why we were the ones chosen to be the damned. The ones to remain and remember and live on. But we do have to live on. There are people who need us. In a few months I will be a father to my first son. We have to think of who remains."

Riff nodded quietly. "I wish someone warned me years ago what was gonna happen to me," he said in a voice that was too old for him. "And I wish I'da listened. Because for the love of God, I don't understand what was going on in our heads two weeks ago. I hope he'd forgive me. I never got the chance to ask him. I like to think he'd understand, but that's just because thinking he'd blame me and hate me forever is still kinda hard to take at this stage in the game." This didn't make sense to Chino, but then guilt rarely ever did to outsiders.

"Do you believe in religion, Riff?" he asked, his arms folded across his chest for warmth as he looked out across the barren field of the churchyard.

"I got a confession for you," Riff answered with a wry smile. "I think all those Burning Bush, Eaten By A Whale stories are a load of bullshit."

Chino laughed. "You know, so do I," he admitted. "But I do believe that when people die, they do not simply disappear. What would be the good in that? So much pain in life, so much feeling and passion and good, how can that all be blown out like a candle and go out with a wisp of smoke? Such a waste. No," he went on, turning his gaze toward the direction they had come, back toward the church, "I am sure they are there. Gone, yes, but do we not all wish to be gone from here? I believe Bernardo is still with his Anita, waiting for her, and for Maria and for me. I can feel him still sometimes, to the extent that I can feel. And if he is there, then I am sure Tony is too, waiting for Maria, and for his mother. For you, too, Riff. We all have to go somewhere in the end."

Riff looked out across the dusky field to the barely visible dreamy blue eye in the window of the church, winking and gleaming as it reflected some beam of light neither of them could see as it danced through the clouds. "I'm leaving tomorrow, you know," Riff said suddenly. "They sent me to some social worker who said I could either get arrested or find a family member to take me in and show me the error of my fucked-up ways. You know, like I needed that lesson. So I'm off to a farm upstate with my third cousin or something. I keep seeing the birds moving outta here for the winter," he went on in an uncharacteristic voice. "Moving on out, looking for someplace new. Makes me wonder, yeah, the place they're leaving is frozen over and shitty, but do you think they ever miss it? Just because it's home?"

Chino's dark eyes turned thoughtful. "I do not think so," he said slowly. "No matter what happens, they always go back."

"Going back," Riff repeated bitterly. "Man, now wouldn't that be something."

The stray sunbeam faded behind a cloud, and the glittering of the stained glass died out into the dull coldness of the surface of a frozen pond. People began to file out of the church, and a mash of voices drifted over the field. Both boys mentally registered that the funeral must be over, but neither of them felt any inclination at all to go back and rejoin their friends, their families, their worlds that would never really be the same. Even when the indistinguishable buzzing of voices shifted to individual inquiries, to "Hey, Action, you seen Riff today? Think he split," or "Maria, where is Chino? I need to see him," neither of them moved. Sitting by mutual agreement in the rapidly drying grass, they did not answer the questions tossed at them from afar. It was over. Tony and Bernardo were dead. What was the good in talking?

Sitting side by side and saying nothing, Riff and Chino waited quietly for the two hidden sunbeams through the clouds which they knew would never come back again. They watched the midday shadows pass across the arching wings of the anchored, faceless angel, painting her with deepening grays as they transitioned subtly into early evening.


	14. Doc: Flashes of Light

**Disclaimer:** Nope. Nothing. Not a thing. Cheers.

**A/N: **Well, we made it! It's taken us what, five years or so to get to this point, but this is the final chapter. Hopefully it ties things up for anyone who has stayed with me through the unnecessarily long time it took me to get this whole thing posted. On that note, I'm going to throw my shoutouts in this note up here because I find nothing kills the moment like a rambling author's note in the bottom margin of a story, and I'm really proud of this ending and I don't want to murder it. Thanks so much to anyone and everyone who reviewed this story, who left me critiques or constructive criticism or just a "good job" at the right moment to inspire me to throw another chapter up on this link. You guys have saved this story, and I hope it was worth it to you. I know it was to me. But I think we've all learned our lesson here, haven't we? If you have the attention span of a fourth grader, stick to one-shots. You get on people's nerves way less that way. Well, I think the best way to thank anyone still hanging out wondering what I have to say is to let you read the final (sniff, sniff, tear slightly) installment in this relatively epic project of mine entitled, perhaps not particularly creatively, _Through Their Eyes_. Enjoy, or at least experience, and one last time, this is RebelFaerie, signing out.

-Author does a little dance at having actually finished something longer than 5,000 words, stops, looks around a little self-consciously, and resumes posting the chapter, which was really the whole point in the first place-

* * *

**Epilogue:**

**Doc:**

**Flashes of Light**

_"One night I fell asleep_

_I woke up on that sunny street_

_At first I thought I couldn't, but now I see_

_That the shadows kept me hidden from the light that calls my name_

_All the creatures stood above me, now I'm crawling towards the sun"_

The Hush Sound, Crawling Towards The Sun

_"Making out their shapes, focus on their frames, can you hear them?_

_Now you're on your feet, floating in the sea, pins and needles..._

_All your plans and all your reveries stagger on_

_While your tin gods are left behind."_

Black Gold, Plans & Reveries

There are some things you just don't forget, no matter how much time passes. Some things explode on the scene with the force of an H-bomb, and they burn with a white-hot light so bright you see it even when you close your eyes. It's not even so much a memory, exactly. I still see the summer of 1950 when I close my eyes. And I have to ask myself, if I saw then the same scene I can't quit seeing now, what could I have done to stop it? What should I have done? How much of it is my fault, or theirs, or anyone's fault?

Sometimes I think I see them out the front window of my store, when I look up over the counter at the snow-covered street view, seeing them owning the world with that walk-tall swagger. I think that any second now Tony's gonna bust right in through that door, talking a mile a minute about this dream he had where I and him and his sister were flying over the streets of Paris and I got myself eaten by a flock of geese. He'll go on for hours as he sweeps up the floor of the shop, as I count the money in the register and try to get a word in edgewise to tell him he missed a spot. Sometimes I swear I see Bernardo walking uptown towards the store where his girl Anita worked, his hands in his pockets and carelessly whistling a Spanish lullaby. I see him turn his face to catch the cool Atlantic breeze off the harbor as it drifted through the heavy summer heat. I can see him see the sun behind the clouds of industrial smog, trying to find the clean air behind it all.

I see them more often than I like to admit. I don't know why their ghosts chose me to follow around. I mean, what was I supposed to do? Questions like that keep men up nights. I'd be surprised if it's just me.

It's almost the end of December now. Christmas came and went, the first Christmas in a new world. Everything's changed now. I feel like the world I knew was wiped out with the snow, and now we're just left with a blank page as we try to figure out where to go from here.

Tony's family knew exactly where to go from here, and as time goes by I'm more and more sure they had the right idea. They packed up the apartment into giant corrugated cardboard boxes a month after the funeral and hit the road. I heard they were headed to Vermont, some family friend who'd set up shop three years ago in the Green Mountains. Can't say I blame them; the city hadn't exactly done right by them over the years. I find myself thinking about her face, too, in that time between one and four in the morning where there ain't nothing but me and my thoughts in the dark. The face of a soldier's mother listening to a 21-gun salute, it's hard to describe, harder to think about. I can't think about it.

Anyway, they're gone. And the rest of us, we linger. Anita moved in with Maria after... after it happened. I think the empty apartment full of broken plates must be haunted for her the way the streets are with me, only worse. Maybe she sees his proud, powerful black eyes in his sister's face. I don't know. It's a situation I don't like to pry into. She's stopped coming around the store, or this whole side of town, really. Mostly she sits on the rooftop of Maria's apartment building, listening to a record player play a soft cha-cha record that was Bernardo's favorite. Maria tells me she sits there all through the night, her hands loosely folded in her lap and an envelope with a boat ticket in her fingers. This has been going on for weeks now. Time's gotta be running out. But Lord only knows how she's going to make a decision.

Maria comes round all the time, mostly just to talk. She knows I and Tony was close, and when Anita goes quiet and stares out at the stars she wants me to tell her stories about him. And I close the shop for an hour, business and profit be damned, and I do. I tell her about Tony as I knew him, the boy built more from hopes and dreams than bones and blood. I tell stories that mean nothing and yet everything, the stories of the best goddamn skywriting that hands over the street with Tony still lingering out there admiring the evenness of the letters, about the day Tony quit the Jets, about the day I met him. As I talk I can see her building a monument in her mind, an immortal memory of the love and goodness and perfection that was her Tony and will always be her Tony so long as she's alive to remember him. I leave stuff out, but I never, ever lie to the girl. She wants to remember him as she knew him, a perfect dream she woke up from too soon. I figure I can at least let her have that. She's dealing. She's a strong girl. She'll be all right, with some time. Never perfect, never the same, but all right.

I don't know if I'd recognize Anybodys if I hadn't watched her change right in front of me. Sorry, not Anybodys. Guess I gotta call her Alison now. She and Maria started talking at first the way I did, just reminiscing and exploring and trying to make some sense of it all. It's different now, though. Anbodys ain't never had any friends that was girls, but it's done her good. She swears less now, and she wears her hair down maybe once a week. I saw her wearing a dress on Christmas. I didn't tell anyone; she's got a rep to protect and I respect that, but I'm telling you now, it was an honest-to-Christ dress. Floral print and everything. I wouldn't make this stuff up. Yeah, she still throws in some choice words when she talks to Action, she still smokes like a chimney, but it seems like she's got less to prove now. Maybe she's seen what comes from trying to walk tall.

Christmas Eve, I found out that Maxwell Schrank retired from the Manhattan Police Department. He's at a temp agency now, answering phone calls and trying to sell something nobody needs.

It ain't all bad round these parts, though. There's light through the clouds. Chino and Estella had their baby boy on the seventh of November, and a prouder parent I ain't never seen. That day he never left his girl's side, watching every movement of those tiny little hands and feet like he was watching the Second Coming. He'd tell anyone who listened about the kid's every move, not that first day only but for months on end. I was on the receiving end of the five minute speech on Baby's First Smile. Estella was proud too, but in a quieter way, more of a glow than a spontaneous explosion. I've seen the kid, too. Cute. They named him Bernardo.

When one person comes, seems like another one's gotta leave. Riff got picked up from my back room where he'd been staying a few days by the black Lincoln of a social worker. For him it was either leave the city and stay with a cousin or get pushed into the foster system for the year until he turned eighteen, which really wasn't much of a choice. He said goodbye to his boys and his girl and rolled off outta Manhattan the week after the funeral. I ain't sure suburban living's what ol' Riff was cut out for. Matter of fact, I'm pretty sure the rules and the sameness and the empty space are killing him. He's been writing to Graziella twice a week since then, first in someone else's neater handwriting like he was dictating, then later in his own jerky hand, with less and less misspellings every time. The boy's trying, I'll give him that. Graz brought a few of the letters by for me to read, and I gave her a few suggestions for life lessons to include as postscripts to her responses. He's set to come back on the 27th of February, on his eighteenth birthday. I'm putting good money down that him and Graziellla will be married by the 28th. Kids don't commit to much these days, but when they do they hold on tight and don't let go.

And then there's the rest of us trying to get by. Sharks and Jets alike, they're all on their own now, no one left to lead them or tell them what's right and what's worth fighting for and what's worth dying for. That's something they've got to figure out for themselves now, and I'm seeing different answers in everyone's eyes. Action broke every window in his mother's house on September 2nd with a baseball bat before hitting the road. I think he's in juvie for six months or so, but that's hearsay. Toro disappeared not long after that without a trace, without a hint of where he was going, all his clothes and books and his porcelain figure of the Virgin Mary exactly where they'd always been in his apartment like they was waiting for him to come back. The only sign he'd gone at all was a note he'd left for his girl, half a piece of paper that said simply, "I am so sorry." Yeah, Toro. Ain't we all.

Some boys have to fight just to fight. They weren't raised to know there was anything else. Others found something else to fight for. A-Rab and Pauline, Indio and Rosalia, they're joining in with Chino and Estella, with Riff and Graziella. If you're gonna fight (and what's life without a little bit of fight in it?), you've gotta fight for love. It don't always work out, we're living with the ghostly proof of that, but at least then you can go down with your head held high.

And then, I guess, there's me. The shop's colder than I remember it being in a long time. Maybe I forgot to pay the heating bill, but I can't believe something like that would slip my mind. My breath escapes me in a visible smoky cloud as I count the money in the register, shuffling fives and calculating the day's profit. Not too bad, actually. Lots of loaded businessmen been dropping in for coffee on cold days like this, and being loaded they don't know enough to tell I'm charging 'em a 300% markup rate. Maybe I'll have my new assistant check out the place's heat when he comes in tomorrow.

Yeah, my new assistant. Turns out I'm getting a little older than I thought. I could use a hand with the moving and the pushing and the heavy lifting. Baby John will be coming round tomorrow morning, dull-eyed and half-asleep, ready to earn his minimum wage. I figure by the end of two weeks I'll be able to open his eyes some, wake him up a little bit. Maybe I can make some kind of difference.

This time.


End file.
